


Starlight in your eyes of blue

by kellsbells



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Angst, F/F, Heed the violence warning for later chapters, Homophobia, Xenophobia, romantic kalex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-13 00:26:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 69,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10502628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kellsbells/pseuds/kellsbells
Summary: When Kara Zor-El falls to earth, it's to a world only recently aware of the existence of aliens - and of magic. This changes what might have been, causing some people in relationships to realise that they're not soulmates.  Eliza Danvers was a loving wife, but when her husband left to marry his soulmate, she became a bitter woman who despises soulmarks. Kara is left entirely in the care of Alex Danvers, Eliza's daughter. Until Alex's 18th birthday comes round, and with it her soulmark. What will happen when Eliza realises that Alex and Kara are soulmates?





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

 

Soulmarks were a relatively new thing when Kara Zor-El fell to earth. A young woman called Zatanna Zatara had just been rejected by a suitor and was seeking a way to introduce some certainty into her life, at least where dating was concerned. With the help of her father, a powerful sorcerer, she had come up with a spell that identified a person’s truest match, the one person in all of the world that they couldn’t be without. She meant only to cast the spell on herself, but by some twist of fate or gods or perhaps even alien intervention, the spell blanketed the planet. From that day on, anyone over the age of 18 years old was tattooed with the name of their soulmate on their dominant arm. So when Kara Zor-El fell to earth, it was to a world only recently aware of the existence of magic in their midst. There were anti-soulmark and anti-magic factions across the globe, and then Kal-El – Superman – revealed himself to save a reporter in Metropolis. The world went a little crazy for a while. When Kara fell to earth, she found a grown man in place of the child she had been sent to protect. A young man besieged my anti-alien factions who thought he was spearheading an invasion. Kal-El did the only thing he could and brought Kara to an old friend – Eliza Danvers. Despite her very messy divorce, he thought Eliza was the best option for a young Kryptonian girl. Eliza had a daughter only a few years older than Kara.

 

To his credit, the mighty Kal-El had second thoughts when he saw the pinched set of Eliza Danvers’ mouth when he arrived with his young cousin. When he saw Alexandra Danvers’ sullen face and the hint of fear every time her mother looked at her, he thought _more_ than twice. But what choice did he have? Lex Luthor and Cadmus were literally trying to murder him on a daily basis. Lois Lane, the love of his life, had lost a leg in a bomb attack on the Daily Planet offices only a month before, simply because she wrote a positive piece when Superman saved a bus full of schoolchildren from falling off a bridge. (He didn’t get what it was with schoolchildren and buses and bridges – he could count on one hand the number of times he’d saved a train full of elderly people. Kids, bridges, buses? At least 12, at last count. It was like they were magnetically attracted…) So Kal-El had little choice, and vowed to himself that he would check in on young Kara Zor-El as often as he could. That turned out to be never, given the circumstances, and Kara was left with the remains of the Danvers family, for better or worse. Kal-El didn’t see his cousin again until she was flying the skies above National City in a cape, many years later.

 

Alex Danvers was a passionate person. Whatever she did, she did with all of her heart. And when Superman dropped off his cousin from the stars, Alex determined to hate this new addition to her hellish life.

 

Alex remembered when life hadn’t been like this. She remembered when Jeremiah and Eliza had been a couple. She remembered when her mother had smiled and had been interested in Alex’s life. When Eliza had cooked every night, when she had looked after Alex the way Vickie Donahue’s mother looked after her daughter. But now Eliza spent most of her time at her lab, and when she was home it was just to sleep or to order in takeout, the remains of which Alex usually had to clean up the following day after school, along with the empty bottles her mother inevitably left in her wake.

 

Alex was smart. She was almost fifteen years old when Kara came to live with them, and she’d had nearly a year of practice at running a household, essentially. She kept the house clean and washed her clothes and Eliza’s, she cooked for herself every night, and she made lunch every night after she finished her homework so she had something to eat at school. Eliza used to pay for her to eat at the school cafeteria, but she soon forgot about putting money on the little card that the school had provided, and when Alex asked her about it she said some things that Alex never wanted to hear again. Her mom was drunk. She was drunk most of the time when she was at home. And Alex didn’t want to hear those things again, those slurred words about how it was Alex’s fault that Jeremiah had left, not Eliza’s. Words about how Alex was wrong, somehow, and it had driven her father away.

 

Jeremiah still came to see her, pretty often actually, but Alex pretended like everything was fine. His new wife, Teri, was beautiful and caring but she already had three kids and Alex didn’t want to ruin his new life the way she had ruined this one, according to her mother. So she pretended everything was fine, and the house was clean and her clothes were always clean and she was well fed, even if Eliza never seemed to be there. So Jeremiah didn’t know, and Alex was a champion, even at the age of 14, at hiding what was really happening.

 

Alex was passionate and strong, and she was determined to hate this new kid with all that she had. She did pretty well at it, too. She couldn’t hurt the girl physically, but she could ignore her and leave her out and ignore the pitiful crying she heard coming from the other girl’s bedroom at night. Eliza was never there, so there was no-one to tell Alex off about her behaviour either.

 

Eliza was very clear, however, that Alex was responsible for Kara. Everything that Kara did would reflect back on Alex, she said, so Alex had to be sure the girl hid who she was, she was to keep Kara safe, she was to make sure Kara was clean and dressed and fed. Because if anything happened and Superman came back, it would be Alex’s fault. And everyone knew what aliens were like. Who knew what he would do if his cousin ended up hurt somehow? (This was before Lex Luthor tried to kill Superman with some sort of monster, and Superman literally died to save the citizens of Metropolis. He rose from the dead a while later, his Kryptonian cells re-generating spontaneously under the yellow sun’s radiation. But when he rose, he rose a hero, the wider world having finally settled their issues with aliens. Mostly.)

 

Alex nodded and did what she was told. She fed Kara, astonished at the Kryptonian girl’s appetite, and made sure she was clean and dressed and where she was supposed to be at all times. But she wouldn’t speak to Kara, she determined, other than when she absolutely had to. That was her revenge on her mother, on Superman, on all of them.

 

Alex was passionate, and Alex _tried_ to hate Kara Zor-El. She tried hard. But then came the day when there was an accident near the beach and her ‘little sister’ ran off to help, ripping a car door off to save a woman and her baby. Alex watched her, mouth agape, as the girl effortlessly lifted the woman and the baby with one arm, jumping into the air and getting them out of danger just as the car exploded. Unfortunately, part of the exploding vehicle hit Alex and broke her arm, knocking her out for good measure. When Alex woke, Kara was holding her good hand anxiously and her mother was glaring at her from the other side of the bed.

 

The telling-off that happened then was epic, and lasted for hours. It was Alex’s fault that Kara had done this, that she’d exposed her powers, and now Eliza was going to have to clean up Alex’s mess the way she always did (that made Alex laugh, at least, since she’d been cleaning up Eliza’s messes along with her own practically since Jeremiah left). The nurses actually asked Eliza to leave the hospital room and Child Services were called and visited the Danvers home later that month. Alex managed to deceive them, showing them their spotless home and two well-fed and well-adjusted children (Eliza was, as always, at work). But from that day on, it wasn’t just Alex against the world. It was Alex and Kara against the world.

 

***

 

When Alex was released from the hospital, Eliza ignored her, as if that was somehow going to hurt Alex after all this time. Eliza hadn’t spoken a kind word to Alex since Jeremiah left; her silence was a gift, as far as Alex was concerned. So Kara came to Alex’s room with food she’d smuggled from the kitchen, using her abilities to keep her hidden from Eliza. It was all junk food, but food nonetheless. They talked and giggled together and Kara told Alex the story of how she’d come to be here on earth, how she’d been lost in the Phantom Zone for 24 years before her pod was somehow pulled out of there, sending her on to her destination. She told Alex about her mother and father, Alura and Zor-El, and her aunt Astra who she’d loved so much. Astra had disappeared shortly before Kara left Krypton and she’d never found out what happened to her. That night when Kara cried, Alex hugged her close and told her everything would be fine, that she’d never be alone again because Alex would always be here.

 

Eliza was suspicious of this new-found closeness and she dragged Alex into the kitchen the following evening when she found the two girls asleep on the couch, a blanket draped over them. They’d fallen asleep watching television.

 

“Why were you lying together like that? You better not do anything to influence that innocent young girl, Alexandra,” she half-hissed, her hand tight on Alex’s biceps. Alex stared at her in confusion.

 

“Like what, mom?” she asked, in genuine confusion, and that seemed to mollify Eliza somewhat.

 

“Be careful with her. She’s naïve, Alex. You need to protect her, to be a good influence on her,” Eliza had said, finally, letting Alex go. The bruises on her arm lasted a week, however.

 

Kara sneaked into Alex’s room most nights now, and the girls talked deep into the night and watched the stars together out on the roof. Alex told Kara all about Jeremiah and how he’d wanted to take her with him, but she didn’t want to wreck his home there the way she’d done here.

 

“Why, Alex?” Kara asked, looking at her with a tiny, adorable little frown.

 

“Because I ruin everything. My mom says so,” Alex shrugged, and Kara shook her head vehemently.

 

“That’s not true, Alex. You make my life better. You make being here okay, and before it was so loud, and so bright and scratchy and too much of everything! You make being on earth okay for me,” Kara said, her face so sincere that Alex couldn’t find it in herself to disbelieve her. Something in her cracked a little, then. The wall that she held up so tightly around herself so that she wouldn’t hurt anyone else or damage anything else without knowing. Because she didn’t know what she’d done to her mom and dad, but Eliza had said it, so it must be true, because why would her mother lie? But now Kara was telling her that Alex made her life better, and she wasn’t lying. Was it possible that her mother was wrong, somehow? Mistaken or… lying? Alex decided to think about it later, and sat next to her Stargirl, looking up at the constellations and listening to Kara’s tales of the other planets she’d visited, of the different aliens Kara knew about, of the wars her Aunt Astra had fought in, of the inventions that they had on Krypton that didn’t exist here, yet. Alex’s world opened up that night, and it wasn’t because she learned about other civilisations; it was because she’d learned that she might not be the monster her mother said she was.

 

Kara was growing, and fast, and Eliza was still more or less absent for the majority of their lives. They fell into a routine between them, Kara learning the rudimentary cookery skills that Alex had taught herself mostly from library books and the internet. They made dinner together when they got home from school, keeping the house clean and their clothes washed and doing everything else that Eliza Danvers really should have been doing. Jeremiah came by now once a month and visited with Kara, too, taking a great interest in her life, especially in her Aunt Astra, for some reason. He even asked Kara to write down her family’s names in Kryptonian symbols for his research, and Kara did so, a little confused. Alex thought she might understand it, though, one night when they’d gone to bed and Kara was snoring under Alex’s arm. Eliza was downstairs watching television. She had come home and only glanced at Alex and Kara before going to the cupboard holding the vodka she preferred to drink when she was at home. Alex saw that her mother was beginning to drink and immediately stood, deciding it was time for bed, even though it was early. She wasn’t sure how much Kara understood of Eliza Danvers’ behaviour, and she wanted to shield her little Kryptonian from it as much as possible.

 

That night she heard a quiet knock at the front door and she was almost certain she could hear her father’s voice talking to Eliza in a quiet, familiar persuasive tone he used to use with Alex when she was being unreasonable. She heard the words ‘Astra In-Ze’ ‘Superman’ and ‘soulmark’ before Eliza began screeching at Jeremiah to get out and take his disgusting ideas with him. Jeremiah said one final thing before Eliza shut the door.

 

“Kal-El could help you find her, Eliza. You deserve to be happy too.”

 

The door slamming woke Kara up, and she was puzzled and then alarmed as Eliza screamed in fury downstairs. There was the sound of glass smashing, and then quiet. Alex held Kara close to her for the rest of the night, determined to protect the girl from Eliza if necessary, but her mother only went to bed quietly a few hours later. When Alex got up in the morning, the remains of the vodka bottle were smashed all over the front door. Alex cleaned it up carefully, washing up the remaining alcohol from the wood floor before her mother came downstairs, knowing that if she didn’t, Eliza would blame her for the mess, even though it was her mother’s own doing.

 

“What happened?” Kara whispered, coming downstairs almost silently and scaring the ever-loving crap out of Alex.

 

“Jesus Christ, Kara. Make a little noise, next time, won’t you?” Alex said, her hand on her chest. Kara was looking at her oddly, her head tilted.

 

“Your heart’s racing,” she said, placing her hand over Alex’s on her chest, feeling her heart thrumming.

 

“Yeah, cos you scared the shit out of me, Kara. I thought you were my mom,” Alex said, smiling.

 

“You shouldn’t be frightened of your mother,” Kara said, frowning, and Alex shrugged.

 

“You don’t know her the way I do,” she said, simply. Kara’s frown deepened and she put her head on Alex’s chest for a long moment, listening to her heart rate slowing and steadying.

 

“I’d never let her hurt you,” Kara whispered, after a long moment of quiet. Alex ran her fingers through Kara’s hair gently.

 

“I know you wouldn’t, Stargirl,” she said, and Kara looked up at her adoringly.

 

“I will always take care of you, Alexandra Danvers,” she said, seriously.

 

“I know. And I’ll always take care of you. El Mayarah, Kara Zor-El,” Alex said, wondering if there was some sort of Klingon/Vulcan hand signal she should be doing to go with her Kryptonese. Kara beamed at her.

 

“Come on, Stargirl. Let’s get some breakfast, or we’ll be late to school.”

 

Jeremiah came back more often, then, and having him visit was a light in their otherwise difficult life with Eliza Danvers. He took an interest in their lives, he learned about Kara’s culture, he helped them with their homework, but only when he could afford to have time away from his family. Eliza always had a caustic word for him whenever she happened to be home during his visits, but Jeremiah just shook his head and whispered to the girls to ignore her.

 

“She’s not well, girls. Sometimes people get sick in their minds, and it’s like they’re trapped and they can’t get out. Don’t let what she says hurt you, okay?” he told them, one day, when Eliza had called him all sorts of names before storming out of the house.

 

“She told Alex that it was her fault you left,” Kara blurted, and Alex turned white immediately. She didn’t want her dad to tell her what she’d done wrong. She didn’t want to talk about it. She tried to get up and run away but her dad held her by her shoulders gently and looked her in the eye, kneeling by her chair.

 

“Alexandra Danvers. That is not true. Not even a little. Your mother and I broke up because we got our soulmarks. My soulmark didn’t say your mother’s name, and she has never forgiven me for that. It has nothing to do with you, my little love. You didn’t do a damn thing wrong,” he said, and like when Kara had told her how much Alex made her life better, Alex couldn’t help but believe her father.

 

“But mom said. She said I broke everything I touched and it was all my fault and you wouldn’t have left if it wasn’t for me,” Alex protested, and her dad winced, tears filling his eyes.

 

“No, honey. That’s not what happened, and you are never to let her make you think like that again. I am so proud of you, for the way you’ve helped Kara get used to living here, the way you protect her, the way you look after the house and keep everything going when your mom can’t. I’m so proud of you, baby,” he repeated, pulling her into a hug, and Alex began to almost believe that maybe, maybe she wasn’t actually the monster she had thought.

 

Jeremiah invited them to visit his new family, and Kara and Alex went once a month for dinner. Teri was a lovely woman, and her kids were pleasant and welcoming and they played board games together and ate junk food and made a mess and no-one snapped at anyone or drank too much alcohol or blamed Alex for anything. It was what their family could have been, and part of her was incensed that she’d stayed with her mother instead of joining this family. But then she might not have met Kara, and she knew that was unacceptable. Kara was everything to Alex.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex's soulmark comes in, and to say that Eliza is unhappy about that is a serious understatement. 
> 
> * Trigger warnings for homophobia, some violence, and suicidal ideation. *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a pretty angsty chapter, just to warn you all. Things do get better, but they get worse, first.

* * *

Life went on, and Kara was getting taller and stronger and Alex was growing, too, her breasts growing and her body turning into a woman’s. The first time she had any real idea of what was growing between her and Kara was when she was changing to go surfing. She was in her room and had just taken her top off. Standing in her bra and shorts, she was looking around for her wetsuit when Kara barged into her room as she did all the time. This time, however, whatever Kara had been saying cut off and she was unexpectedly silent. Alex found her wetsuit and turned, seeing Kara gaping at her.

 

“Kara, are you…”

 

Whatever Alex had been about to say was cut off, too, when Kara’s eyes began to glow an unearthly red. Alex had seen this before in footage of some of Superman’s fights, and her instincts told her to get down. So she did, diving to the floor with a yelp. Kara’s heat vision had come in, apparently, and was now cutting a swathe through the posters on Alex’s wall. Alex took a breath.

 

“Kara, close your eyes,” she said, as calmly as she could manage. Kara followed her order unthinkingly and the lasers or whatever they were stopped as suddenly as they’d started. Alex ran downstairs and pulled the fire extinguisher out from under the sink, running back upstairs and putting out the small fires. She sat on the edge of her bed, breathing heavily, still half-dressed. It suddenly occurred to her that Kara had been looking at her, Alex, when her heat vision started, and she reddened. Was it some sort of a premature… she headed off that line of thought immediately. She found a t-shirt, putting it on quickly, and then she went to stand next to Kara, putting her hands on her shoulders gently.

 

“Kara, I want you to relax. Think about something else. Cool water, or anything that’s not hot, okay? Think about Donald Trump, that oughta do it,” she said, and Kara sniggered. It was a few long seconds before her eyes stopped glowing, and about thirty seconds after that, Alex judged it safe for Kara to open her eyes. She led her across to her bed, sitting on the edge, and she told Kara to open her eyes.

 

“Alex, I’m so sorry, I don’t even know how it happened. I didn’t try to do it, I promise,” Kara said, babbling.

 

“I know, sweetie,” Alex said, pulling Kara close and kissing her on the head. “I know. You’re going to have to practise so you don’t do it accidentally again, though, okay?”

 

They did nightly drills after that in the backyard, and it wasn’t long before Kara could summon and stop her heat vision at will, just like they’d done with her other powers. Together, they were unbeatable. El Mayarah. Alex tried not to think about what had started off Kara’s heat vision, and took great care to change in the bathroom after that, with the door locked. Her mother’s odd words to her from a year or so back were echoing in her head, and she didn’t want Eliza to do anything to separate her from Kara.

 

***

_Two years later_

 

Alex was at Stanford when she started drinking. She was sinking without Kara, sinking into depression and self-hatred and emptiness, and the harsh burn of Scotch made her feel something other than the gaping hole in her chest where Kara should have been.

 

It was the middle of the week in her second year, and her soulmark was well-established, now; no longer burning as it had so painfully during that first year of separation. Alex had done well for the first year, but then things started to go downhill when the work got harder and her hard-won self-control started to fail her. Kara was alone and there wasn’t anything Alex could do about it. Even Jeremiah and Kal-El hadn’t been able to find Eliza and Kara. So Alex turned to drink and then, when one of her many hookups offered her a pill, she took it. Because if it was something that might make her feel better, why not? And if it killed her, then she wouldn’t have to feel like this anymore.

 

She woke up in a cell at the local police station. A DUI. She hadn’t actually been driving her car, to her own relief, but she’d obviously intended to, because the keys were in the ignition when the local cop found her. She had a broken wrist, too, from resisting arrest. Another charge. Her career at Stanford was over. Any career she might have had as a scientist was over, too. She couldn’t even bring herself to care about it.

 

And then Hank Henshaw came into her cell and offered her the deal of a lifetime. She just had to give up her whole life and she could at least help the world deal with aliens. Aliens like Kara. Maybe, just maybe, she’d be able to find a way to be reunited with Kara.

 

She took the deal.

 

It was exhausting. Months of training, training so physically demanding that she regularly threw up. It didn’t help, of course, that she was detoxing from alcohol abuse at the same time. Hank was unrelenting and, when she complained, simply pointed out that she did this to herself. So Alex fought through it, losing alarming amounts of weight until she started to build muscle, eventually managing to keep the high-protein diet down. After 6 months she was in better shape than she’d been her entire life, her abs like a washboard. She remembered Kara nearly setting the house on fire all those years ago when the girl had first seen Alex’s abs – and her boobs – and she laughed until she cried herself to sleep in her bunk at the DEO.

 

The DEO. Department of Extranormal Operations. ET go home, as it was known to some within the agency. Hank, to his credit, was trying to change that mindset. Aliens were here on earth for just as many reasons as any refugee fled their homes, he told Alex one night when he was feeling particularly talkative. Some were evil but many were just fleeing conflict or persecution or even the death of their planets. He said that last while looking at her pointedly, but Alex just nodded, and he smiled.

 

When her physical training was done, Alex went through tactical training, learning to fight and shoot. Hand-to-hand, weapons, all sorts of firearms. After that, she went back to school. She studied more than twelve hours a day, learning about alien physiology along with human, dissecting alien corpses along with human, all of whom had left their bodies to science, or so Hank assured her. She became one of the world’s foremost experts on the physiology of alien species, and she wasn’t able to tell a soul. Not that she had a soul to tell, of course. Because the only person she loved on this earth – other than Jeremiah Danvers – was lost to her. And then came the news that Jeremiah, too, was gone. Disappeared into the night like a ghost, leaving behind his soulmate and children. Alex searched for him, too, and had no more luck than she’d had searching for Eliza and Kara. So she studied hard, and qualified as a human medical doctor as well as the closest thing the earth had to an alien MD. She studied subjects that the vast majority of humans didn’t know existed. She used her knowledge of Kryptonese to decode crystals provided by Superman that held almost all of the lost knowledge of Krypton and Daxam, and from there she learned 4 other alien languages. Despite the loss of Jeremiah, it was the best time of her life, at least if she didn’t count the time she’d spent with Kara.

 

In a few short years, Alex went from alcoholic to Assistant Director of the DEO. She helped take down evil aliens, she helped refugees acclimate to earth, and she averted the apocalypse eight times that she was aware of, and one time that only Hank knew about, because he’d never told her that what she was translating was the key to defusing an alien bomb planted under the Statue of Liberty that would have wiped out all human life on earth, leaving all other life intact. Alex had a drawerful of medals that she could never show to anyone, including one pinned to her breast by the President herself. But she was still empty, because Kara Zor-El was lost to her, maybe forever.

 

***

_Present_

 

It was Alex’s eighteenth birthday the following day, and she was leaving for Stanford the following month. She and Kara had spent the whole day together, watching movies and surfing and eating pizza and ice cream until even the Kryptonian was full.

 

“Alex?” Kara said, from under the blanket on the couch. (She’d pulled it over her head because she was so full she needed to hibernate like a bear, she said. Alex just chuckled, knowing that Kara just didn’t like the scary movie she’d put on. She gave in after twenty minutes, putting Aladdin on so Kara could sing along.)

 

“Yeah, Stargirl?” Alex asked, absently.

 

“You know that I love you, right?” Kara asked, anxiously.

 

“Of course, Kara. El Mayarah, Stargirl. I love you too,” Alex said, pulling the blanket off Kara’s head to find her hair fuzzed up adorably underneath. She swept the hair off Kara’s face, tucking it behind her ear carefully.

 

“I know,” Kara said, impatiently. “But I mean… I _love_ you. Only you. You’re the only reason I ever felt at home on this planet,” she said, and Alex nodded. She knew what Kara meant.

 

“Me too,” Alex said, simply, and Kara sat up, wrapping herself around Alex like a baby sloth.

 

“You’ll come back, won’t you?” Kara asked, her face buried in Alex’s hair.

 

“Of course, Kara. I’m just going to college. I’m never going to leave you behind. You’ll be there soon enough,” Alex reassured her. “You’re way too smart not to graduate early. I bet you’ll be at Stanford by next year.”

 

Kara nodded.

 

“I love you, Alex.”

 

“I love you, Stargirl,” Alex said, kissing Kara’s hair.

 

Kara fell asleep after Aladdin, her body stretched out on the couch, her legs draped over Alex’s. It was midnight when the pain started in Alex’s wrist, startling her. Her soulmark. She turned her arm to look at it, eyes wide when she saw the Kryptonian symbols on her arm.

 

_Kara Zor-El_

Alex was about to say something when a hand closed over her mouth.

 

“Don’t you say a word, Alexandra Danvers,” her mother said from behind her. Her voice was a whisper, but the menace in it was clear. “Get up right now, and follow me into the kitchen. Silently.”

 

Alex stood as instructed, making sure not to disturb Kara. She could tell her tomorrow. They were soulmates. There was nothing her mother could do to keep them apart, especially not now.

 

“Whose name is that?” Eliza demanded, closing the kitchen door, as if that would stop a Kryptonian listening in. If said Kryptonian wasn’t currently snoring louder than a steam train.

 

“It’s Kara,” Alex said simply, her smile wide. Kara was her _soulmate._

 

“Alex! How could you?” Eliza said, her face set in lines of disgust.

 

“How could I? I didn’t do anything,” Alex said, confused. “It’s my soulmark. Kara’s my soulmate. I didn’t do it.”

 

“You must have done something to corrupt her,” Eliza snarled. “She’s your sister, Alex. This is… disgusting!”

 

“She’s my foster sister, mom. We don’t call each other sisters. We never have. You’re the only one that calls us that. And I didn’t choose her. This is the universe, or the gods, or magic. Whatever that spell was, everyone who meets their soulmate is happy, mom.  Why don’t you believe that?” Alex said, her eyes beginning to fill. This was supposed to be the best day of her life – finding out who her soulmate was, turning eighteen. And her mother was making it into something dirty, something bad. Alex had never so much as kissed Kara, knowing that neither of them were ready for that.

 

“You’re disgusting, Alexandra. This will not stand. I will not let you corrupt that poor girl any further. Now go get your things, you’re leaving.”

 

Alex stood there, confused.

 

“Leaving to go where?” she asked, frowning.

 

“I don’t care, Alexandra. Anywhere that isn’t here. You are not my daughter. You are sick and I won’t have that kind of sickness in my house, or around your sister.”

 

Alex stayed motionless, still not understanding.

 

“You do not live here anymore, Alexandra. You are leaving now, with whatever you can carry. I never want to see you again.”

 

Kara was still asleep. Alex decided to go and wake her, but before she could, Eliza’s hand closed around her biceps, fingers digging in cruelly.

 

“Don’t you dare go near her with that filth on your arm. You have five minutes to get your things and then you are gone,” Eliza said, her voice a hiss in Alex’s ear. She pulled Alex along, dragging her upstairs and practically throwing her into her bedroom.

 

“Five minutes,” Eliza repeated. Alex packed automatically, picking up her notebooks and textbooks from school, some clothes, her teddy bear, Krypto, and a few pictures. She used the phone in her bedroom to call her dad, who was half-asleep when she called, but he agreed to come and get her without much explanation. Alex could barely speak, only choking out a few words. She opened the door to find Eliza standing there, her face set in lines of hatred.

 

“I’ll have the rest of your belongings sent to your father. He can deal with you now, him and his whore of a wife,” Eliza said, grasping Alex’s upper arm again and dragging her downstairs. She opened the front door quietly, almost throwing Alex out bodily. Alex stared at her.

 

“Mom. What’s wrong with you? I didn’t choose this,” Alex said, gesturing at her arm. “It wasn’t me. I love Kara,” she said, and her mother slapped her so hard that her head rocked back on her neck. She could taste blood. She stood on her mother’s front porch, blood seeping from the edge of her lip, gaping at her mother. Eliza slammed the door in her face.

 

Alex’s father pulled up just then in his car, and Alex ran to him, crying so hard that she could barely get a word out. Jeremiah jumped out of the car, taking her in his arms, comforting her until she could show him her soulmark.

 

“Oh, God,” he said, staring at the Kryptonian symbols on her arm. “Of all the things, that would just send her over the edge,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Alex. We’ll come back tomorrow and talk some sense into her. Let’s just give her tonight to calm down,” he said, soothingly.

 

Alex looked up at him hopefully.

 

“Do you think she will?”

 

Jeremiah shrugged helplessly.

 

“Your mother has never been very rational where soulmarks are involved, sweetie. But we’ll fix this. I’ll talk to Kal-El, too. We’ll fix this.”

 

Alex couldn’t sleep, that night. She was in her step-sister’s room on the spare bed, and it was perfectly comfortable, but Alex was used to sleeping with a warm Kryptonian wrapped around her. Sleeping alone felt wrong. At 6.30 the next morning she was practically begging Jeremiah to take her back.

 

When they arrived at the Danvers house at 7am, it was empty. Kara and Eliza were gone. Jeremiah submitted a missing persons’ report for both, but nothing came of it. Eliza had disappeared, taking Kara with her, and Alex Danvers was alone.

 

***

 

Kara woke up on the morning of Alex’s birthday confused and feeling strange. It felt almost like the way humans felt after they had been drinking alcohol, or at least according to the books Kara had read.

 

She tried to open her eyes and found them gummed together. She tried a little harder and they finally opened, still half stuck together with some gross substance. She wiped it away and saw the world passing by through a window at her feet. She was in the back of a car. She sat up, finding Eliza sitting in the front seat driving the car at high speed.

 

“Eliza?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

 

Eliza was startled and almost crashed the car, swerving across into the next lane, causing the cars behind to hoot furiously.

 

“Kara. You’re awake. I’m sorry, honey, but something bad happened. We were attacked. A government organisation trying to capture you. They hit you with some sort of substance that knocked you out. I grabbed you and the stuff I could manage, and started driving. We’re almost on the other side of the country, now,” she said, and Kara could tell from the colour of the foliage on the trees around them that they were, indeed, heading east to somewhere a lot cooler than Midvale.

 

“Where’s Alex?” Kara asked, and Eliza stiffened. Her face in the mirror looked almost… disgusted? But then it changed to sorrow.

 

“Alex died, Kara. She was shot. She died. I’m so sorry, Kara,” she said, and Kara’s world collapsed.

 

She remembered trying to get out of the car and Eliza pulling them over and something stinging at her neck and then she didn’t remember anything at all for a while.

 

When she woke up she wondered, briefly, if she’d gone colour blind. But it was just that nothing was bright, anymore. Nothing was colourful. And no matter what Eliza did or said, Kara couldn’t bring herself to care. She kept a low profile, going to a local school and doing what she was told, doing her chores – though Eliza was now at home a lot more, actually cooking for Kara and keeping her clothes and the house clean. Kara tried eight times to end her own life, but she couldn’t break her own skin. She discovered that strangling yourself to death is impossible, and that when she flew into space she passed out and crash landed in the desert, twice, and once in the Atlantic. She stopped trying after that, working hard and getting a place at Stanford under her new identity of Linda Lee. Eliza was Laura, now, and they lived a quiet life, devoid of colour or beauty. Kara even came to feel fond of her foster mother. Until her eighteenth birthday, that was.

 

On her eighteenth birthday her soulmark burned its way onto her arm and she looked at it, startled at the name.

 

_Alexandra Danvers_

She waited for it to fade away, the way soulmarks did when a person’s soulmate died, turning into a simple white scar. She waited an hour. Then she woke Eliza up gently, sitting on the edge of her foster mother’s bed.

 

“Kara?” Eliza was tired, fuzzy-headed. She didn’t understand. None of them had known when, exactly, Kara’s birthday was, so she couldn’t have known when to expect this.

 

“I turned eighteen at midnight, Eliza,” Kara said, her voice low and dangerous. “Would you like to know what happened?”

 

Eliza looked at her and then her expression changed. To one of fear.

 

“Kara. It’s not what you think,” she said, her hand creeping towards the drawer at her bedside. There must be something in there, Kara realised, that could incapacitate her. That’s how Eliza had rendered her unconscious when Alex ‘died’. Kara allowed her eyes to glow, just a little, and Eliza froze.

 

“What I think is that my soulmate is Alex Danvers, and that my soulmate isn’t dead, because my soulmark is still fresh. Black. If she was dead, it would have faded, if it had even appeared in the first place. So what did you do, Eliza? She ‘died’ the night of her eighteenth birthday. Did she have my name on her wrist?”

 

Eliza looked away, her face twisted up in disgust. Kara grabbed her chin, turning her face back so that she was looking at Kara directly.

 

“Did she have my name on her wrist?” Kara repeated, her eyes glowing and her grip tightening.

 

“Yes,” Eliza ground out, her jaw tight.

 

“What did you do, Eliza?”

 

“I told her to leave, and I knocked you out and brought you here,” Eliza said.

 

“What did you use to knock me out?” Kara asked. Eliza looked towards the drawer she’d been moving towards a moment before. “Tell me what it is. I’m not stupid enough to open it.”

 

“It’s Kryptonite. Radioactive rock from your planet, mixed with a strong sedative,” Eliza said, and Kara nodded.

 

“Why can’t I feel it now?” Kara asked.

 

“It’s in a lead case. Lead blocks the effects.” Eliza confirmed.

 

“Okay,” Kara said, nodding. “Where is Alex?”

 

“I don’t know,” Eliza said. “I told her to get out and I never saw her again.”

 

“You turned out your own daughter because she’s my soulmate?” Kara asked, incredulous.

 

“I hoped that I would be able to save you from this perversion,” Eliza said.

 

Kara shook her head.

 

“What is wrong with you, Eliza Danvers? What twisted you up so badly that you would do this to your own daughter, and to me?”

 

Eliza turned her eyes away, since her face was caught in Kara’s grip. Kara sighed and grasped Eliza’s wrist, turning it to look at the soulmark on her arm. She dropped Eliza’s arm, her eyes wide, gasping.

 

“Rao…” she breathed, and Eliza took her moment of distraction and went for the kryptonite in her drawer. Kara caught her other arm and broke her wrist without changing expression. Eliza howled in pain, sinking back into the bed in fear. Kara smiled at her, but it was all teeth.

 

“Your soulmark says Astra In-Ze,” Kara said, her expression savage. “She was my aunt. She _is_ my aunt. I thought she was dead,” Kara went on. “Obviously she’s not. This is yet another thing that you kept from me. You are a sick woman, Eliza Danvers. I’m going to leave you now, but I’m going to be keeping my eye on you. And Rao help you when I find my aunt. She will not allow her mate to act in such a dishonourable fashion.”

 

Kara leaned forward, her eyes glowing again, that unearthly colour that hid her eyes completely, blinding any onlooker.

 

“If you try to hide from me, I will find you, and I will damage you so you can’t hide from me again. Do you understand, Eliza Danvers?” Kara asked, and the woman nodded, unable to speak through fear.

 

“Good. You better hope that Alex is alive and well, Eliza, or I’ll be back even sooner. And the last thing you will see is my eyes blazing before I boil your brain in your skull.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mysterious woman in black starts helping humans, one of whom happens to be Alexandra Danvers. And we find out what Kara has been up to in the meantime

* * *

 

There was a new superhero in National City. A huge forest fire had broken out and firefighters were trapped, and a flying figure in black saved them with freeze breath just like Superman’s. Alex spent hours studying the footage and she was reasonably certain that the person in question was a female Kryptonian. As far as she and the DEO were aware, Kara Zor-El wasn’t the only female Kryptonian on earth, but she was the one most likely to want to assist humans. They suited up immediately, sending out a strike team to contain the Kryptonian and determine her motives. The woman seemed to always know they were there, however, and she evaded them. Hank was frustrated, worried in a way that Alex didn’t quite understand, but the woman didn’t do any harm. In fact, she showed up at quite a few incidents over the following few months, saving civilians and putting out fires.  

 

And then there was Alex’s flight to Geneva. She was attending a conference, ostensibly for bioengineering in the new millennium. Her real mission was to track down an alien who may or may not be a Dominator, a terrifying species who could control minds and had razed planets to dust across the galaxy, at least according to their source. She never got to find out if the Dominators were planning at attack, however, because first there was some horrible turbulence, just after take-off, and then one engine blew out, followed by the other. Alex looked out, seeing the wing of the plane on fire.

 

She sent off a plea to the universe, to Rao, to Jesus, to whoever was listening, that they would take care of Kara for her. She was still searching for her soulmate, but she hadn’t found a lead in years. Eliza and Kara Danvers had disappeared and still hadn’t been located, almost 8 years later. Jeremiah had been gone for almost 6.

 

The plane was going down, so Alex closed her eyes, breathing in deeply. Her last breath. She summoned up mental images of Kara, of those eyes, too blue to be of this earth. Of that mane of golden hair, of the scent of her skin. Her kindness. Her soft hands, the way she’d giggled when Alex tickled her ribs. The way she’d said, “I love you,” as if her whole heart was in the words.

 

The plane levelled off suddenly, and then tipped to one side as they were guided through the suspension cables of the downtown bridge. Alex’s eyes snapped open as they landed gently in the river, and she turned to look out the window, seeing a woman dressed in black holding on to the plane’s wing, pulling herself up. For a moment the eyes reminded her of Kara’s, but it wasn’t Kara. Her face was mostly covered with a mask and her hair tied back from her face, but the hair was dark and the eyes a touch too light to be Kara. She looked at Alex, a smirk on her face, and then she leapt off the wing of the plane and soared into the night.

 

Their Kryptonian shadow had saved a plane. Alex’s plane. When she arrived at the DEO that night, she told Hank everything she could about the woman, including the odd light streak in her hair, and then she went home. She didn’t drink much anymore, but she figured she deserved a nice glass of scotch after the night she’d had. She sat down in the silence of her apartment, lights off, kicking off her shoes and taking a sip of the well-aged whiskey. And then she threw it all over herself when a woman spoke to her from the darkness.

 

“You were the target of the bomb that destroyed the plane’s wing. Who are you, Agent? And why do you have my niece’s name on your wrist?” the woman asked, stepping out of the shadows in the corner of the room.

 

Alex didn’t bother going for her gun. She didn’t have any Kryptonite rounds in her apartment and she knew she couldn’t hurt the woman any other way. She looked at her ruined t-shirt in disgust.

 

“Would you mind getting me another drink?” she asked, pleasantly. “I just need to change.”

 

The woman’s eyebrow raised slightly, but she nodded, heading to the kitchen with Alex’s glass. Alex went to her room to change, deciding to go the whole hog and put her pyjamas on. The Kryptonian could rip her limb from limb and Alex wouldn’t be able to stop her, so she might as well not worry about it, she figured.

 

She went back to the living room, sitting down in the darkness. The Kryptonian sat on the chair opposite, handing her a glass of scotch. She’d helped herself to one, too, sipping it carefully.

 

“So, human. You have my niece’s name on your arm. This is your soulmark, you humans call it?”

 

Alex nodded.

 

“Where is she?” the woman demanded.

 

“I don’t know,” Alex said, and her voice broke a little at the admission.

 

“How is that possible?” the woman asked, her eyes narrowing.

 

“I’ll tell you my life story when you tell me why you’re here and who you are,” Alex countered.

 

“Very well,” the Kryptonian said. “I am Astra In-Ze. I am from Krypton, like Kara Zor-El. I crashed to earth almost ten years ago. There were many of us at first, but there was much confusion when we arrived and these… soulmarks appeared on our bodies. My husband had someone else’s name on his wrist, as did I.”

 

“Can I see it?” Alex asked, a few things clicking in her brain all at once.

 

Astra shrugged, pulling up the sleeve of her black jumpsuit. As Alex suspected, it said “Eliza Danvers.”

 

“That… explains a lot,” Alex said, before taking a larger sip of scotch, savouring the burn.

 

“What do you mean, human?” Astra demanded.

 

“My name is Alex Danvers,” Alex said, and Astra stopped breathing for a moment. “My mother’s name is Eliza.”

 

“Your mother?” Astra prompted.

 

Alex told her the whole story. Kal-El leaving Kara with them, Eliza and Jeremiah’s divorce because of their soulmarks, the name in Kryptonese on her mother’s wrist. The Kryptonese name on Alex’s wrist when she turned 18, the last time she’d seen Kara.

 

“This woman does not sound like she is a worthy mate,” Astra said, her face twisted in distaste. “She has no honour or courage.”

 

“My father says that she’s sick, in her mind. That she’s trapped and she can’t get out. I don’t really understand it, but she called me sick and dirty for the way I felt about Kara, and then she took Kara away, and I haven’t seen her since then. I miss her so much,” Alex said, putting the glass down on the coffee table and wrapping her arms around herself.

 

“You are brave, human, to be standing strong after this. I, too, feel the need for my soul’s mate, and the emptiness within. Perhaps we can help each other find them,” Astra said, suddenly sitting next to Alex, her eyes shining in the dark room. Alex allowed herself to be wrapped up in this stranger’s arms, suddenly crying harder even than she’d cried that night when her mother had slapped her and thrown her out of the only home she’d ever known. Astra held her gently, as if she was precious, and Alex cried her heart out on the Kryptonian’s strong shoulders.

 

***

 

Kara was so angry she could barely think. She was floating high above the east coast of the US, looking at the lights through the clouds. She didn’t know what to do. Alex was out there somewhere. Alex was alive. And yes, that should make her feel better. But now she had to find Alex. And she didn’t know whether she could trust anyone, because Eliza was supposed to be her foster mother, the person who cared for her most in the world. And yet she had betrayed both Kara and Alex in such a profound way that Kara didn’t know how to proceed with her life. Alex was her soulmate, but Kara had no idea how to find her. The first logical step would be to approach Jeremiah Danvers. Kara decided to do that, and she returned to her foster mother’s house, picking up a few essential items for her long flight to the West Coast to find Alex’s father. She dropped in on Eliza too, taking a savage sort of satisfaction in the look of fear Eliza cast in her direction when she told the woman she was leaving for a while, and that if she went anywhere, Kara would find her.

 

Kara had also retrieved the Kryptonite drug that Eliza had used on her. She’d thoroughly searched her foster mother’s belongings and found another small case lined with lead. She’d opened both boxes while in a cave miles from any humans, to check if the substance did actually affect her without putting herself at risk of a human deciding to inject her with it. The wave of nausea and weakness that hit her as soon as she opened the boxes convinced her that kryptonite could probably kill her in a large enough dose, and she resolved to avoid it at all costs. She sealed both boxes with her heat vision and swam until she was off the coast of the Phillipines, deep underwater. She buried the Kryptonite cases in the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, using her heat vision to turn some of the rock deep in the wall of the trench into magma, pushing the boxes inside so they were buried inside the stone. It was unlikely that anyone would ever be able to find them, never mind excise them from the rock.

 

Once she’d made as many preparations as she could, she dressed all in black, pulling a backpack onto her back filled with food, and made the flight across the US. She stayed low, figuring that the expression “staying under the radar” probably had a literal meaning. She didn’t want to trigger any actual government black ops people to find her and follow her.

 

It took her a while to find Jeremiah Danvers’ home from the sky, but once she did she carefully descended into the backyard, using the tall trees to disguise her landing. As she was about to knock on the back door, she thought she heard a noise from the bushes behind her, but she couldn’t see anyone. She didn’t use her xray vision immediately, however, figuring it was probably just the Danvers’ cat. She knocked quietly on the back door and Jeremiah answered a few seconds later, his eyes wide.

 

“Kara! We’ve been looking for you…”

 

His words stopped abruptly as a dart hit him in the neck. A glowing, green dart. Kara stumbled back a few feet and took off into the air at high speed. There were people after her, people trying to catch her with Kryptonite. She flew away so fast that she broke the sound barrier in seconds. She flew back to Eliza Danvers’ home, not knowing where else she was safe. For now, Kara Danvers would stay earthbound, and she would try to find Alex through other means.

 

***

 

Alex was tired. Tired, sad, and tired of being sad. Meeting Kara’s aunt had made her realise how much she wasn’t living her life at all, because Astra, too, was living a half-life, waiting for her soulmate. That first night, after they talked and Alex cried, Astra agreed to come to the DEO.

 

“But only as a guest, Alexandra. At the first sign of Kryptonite, I will be gone and you will never see me again.”

 

Alex spoke to Hank at length before he would agree. But once he realised that Astra was Kara’s aunt, the Kara that he knew Alex had been looking for since she’d disappeared on Alex’s 18th birthday, he agreed. She had spent a lot of time talking with Hank during her years at the DEO, and she saw him as a second father. Especially since Jeremiah’s disappearance.

 

“Bring her in, Alex, and you have my word that we will treat her as a guest and no kryptonite or any other method will be used to trap or hold her.”

 

Alex was satisfied with that and she told Astra that she trusted Hank. When they arrived, however, Astra looked at Hank strangely.

 

“Might I speak with you in private, Director?” she asked. He nodded cautiously. “With Alex, of course,” Astra clarified, and he nodded again.

 

When they were in a room away from the rest of the DEO, Astra fixed Hank with a look of confusion.

 

“Director, why is a Martian in charge of the DEO on earth?” she asked, and Alex’s hand went to her holster almost automatically. Astra grabbed her hand, shaking her head.

 

“How did you know?” Hank asked, resigned. Alex stared at him.

 

“I am familiar with your planet’s history. And I once met a white Martian. If you will forgive the observation, there is a scent that your people share. Perhaps a pheromone? Most Kryptonians would not recognise it. Not that it matters, since there are but a few of us left. How have you come to be here on earth, Green Martian?” Astra asked, her eyes narrowed but her posture relaxed.

 

“I… I managed to escape the genocide, after my wife and children were murdered,” Hank said, his eyes sad. Alex gasped.

 

“Hank,” she said, touching his arm gently. He looked at her in surprise, but continued.

 

“I landed on this planet some years ago, and I was hiding. In the rainforests of South America. I don’t know exactly where I was, but Hank Henshaw – the original Hank Henshaw – was hunting me. I tried to convince him that I was no threat to him, but he shot me with a compound that incapacitated me. There was a struggle and he fell off a cliff to his death. I managed to remove the darts and once I had recovered I returned here and took his place. I decided to try to help aliens, rather than persecuting them the way that he did. The DEO has a bad reputation. Almost as bad as Cadmus,” he mused, and Astra shuddered.

 

“I have heard of this Cadmus. Many of my people disappeared and all we heard was whispers of their names, later. They have a doctor there, I have heard, who tortures aliens and takes their parts for experimentation. It is my belief that they wish to find a way to kill all aliens on earth, or to give humans powers. If not both,” Astra said. Hank looked at her worriedly before turning his gaze on Alex.

 

“Agent Danvers, you may take me to a cell now, if you wish,” he said, holding out his hands while simultaneously transforming into what must be his real form. He looked to be around 8 feet tall, with black armour and a red X on his chest. His eyes glowed red, and his skin was green.

 

“What’s your real name?” Alex asked, looking up at the huge alien who’d just put his life in her hands.

 

“I am J’onn J’onnz,” he said, and Alex held out one hand. For him to shake. He looked at her incredulously.

 

“Pleased to meet you, J’onn,” Alex said, taking his hand when he didn’t hold it out, and shaking it. “I’m really glad you told me.”

 

J’onn shrank down from his real form, back into the body of Hank Henshaw. Alex’s mind was boiling with questions.

 

“How did your respiratory system adapt to our atmosphere? And how does the size change work? Can you transform yourself into any shape?” she asked, and Hank – J’onn – held a hand up to forestall any further questions.

 

“I think we should probably discuss that another time, Agent Danvers,” he said. “General Astra. Are you willing to work with the DEO? Even knowing that I am still in command? Assuming Agent Danvers isn’t about to out me as an alien?” he said, with a half-smile. He looked at Alex, then, and he appeared to have tears in his eyes.

 

“I am willing,” Astra said, quietly.

 

“And I would never out you. I’ve known you for years, Hank. Whatever planet you come from, you’re a good person. There’s no-one I trust more,” Alex said simply.

 

“Thank you, Alex,” he said, simply. She squeezed his arm.

 

“I think maybe we need to come up with a costume,” Alex mused, looking at Astra, who was wearing some sort of Kryptonian one-piece jumpsuit.

 

“I will not parade around in a cape like Kal-El,” Astra said acerbically. Alex snorted.

 

“I’m sure we can come up with something,” she said, with a wide smile, and Astra glared at her.

 

They were still discussing the cape when Astra said that she wanted a new identity, to stop running. Hank agreed, saying he would set the paperwork in motion right away.

 

“And I wish to search for my niece, and my mate. I will need some sort of credentials, to aid me. Perhaps law enforcement?” Astra asked.

 

“You can use the resources of the DEO for your search. I will ensure that you are linked to our systems in your home, the way Agent Danvers is,” Hank confirmed. “And you will be given DEO credentials, should you ever need to use them.”

 

“I’ve been looking for them for a long time, though, Astra,” Alex said. “Just so you know. I have never found a sign of them.”

 

“Perhaps… fresh eyes, I believe is the phrase?” Astra said, delicately. Alex smiled weakly.

 

“Perhaps,” she agreed. “We can always hope.”

 

She hoped, but she didn’t really believe. Kara was out there, somewhere, alone. And Alex would do anything to find her.

 

But so too would Cadmus.

 

***

 

Kara finished her years at Stanford without incident. She studied Journalism, among other things. She had done some very subtle investigation of Alex, finding that her soulmate had attended Stanford for a time. There were no electronic records of her time at the school, but there were some financial records on paper that Kara investigated in the dead of night using her superspeed to remain more or less invisible. So Alex had attended Stanford, but had disappeared during her second year. There was no record of her online or otherwise after that. Kara found tales of other people who had disappeared in a similar fashion – people with language skills, science or military training – through careful questioning of some of her professors. Kara figured that with Alex’s skills and her links to Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers, bioengineers who were acquainted with Superman and who were experts in alien physiology, it was more than possible that she might have been recruited by the government. Kara knew that there was at least one agency who wanted to capture her and probably other aliens. It just made sense. Americans were nothing if not paranoid, and would more than likely have at least one government agency devoted to identifying alien threats. Alex would be the perfect recruit for that kind of agency. Kara just hoped that, if Alex was working for one of those agencies, she hadn’t changed her view of aliens as a consequence. Because her soulmate was still an alien.

 

Kara heard small things throughout her time at Stanford, about people who were struggling in the academic environment or who were bored or who were otherwise in danger of losing their place, who suddenly disappeared. Several of them, Kara found, had just dropped out and gone back home or had gone travelling. But a significant number of them had disappeared from online life. And if there were that many from one institution, there could be hundreds of others. To her frustration, she wasn’t able to find anything about any of those who had disappeared. They were all loners without family – Alex was an anomaly, in a way, since she had Jeremiah and his family to link her to the outside world. Assuming Jeremiah had survived the attack that had been aimed at Kara. She couldn’t exactly pop down to Midvale and ask them. Letters could be intercepted, phone calls could be listened into, her internet usage could be tracked. She’d taken every precaution she could in searching for Alex, paying a computer major a lot of money to set her up with a laptop that could search the internet without being tracked through most normal means. But she didn’t use that very often, either, because the search terms she used were likely to be fairly unique, and she didn’t know what these government agencies were or were not capable of.

 

Kara had collected a large file of incidents that she believed to be extra-terrestrial in origin, and where she believed one of the shadowy government agencies might be involved. They had a similarity to them, these incidents. The photographs of the crime scenes all had a huge number of SUVs and unmarked agents in black body armour on the scene, and all the cover stories sounded the same. There was always a gas leak of some sort that caused hallucinations, or an outbreak of an unusual (but terrestrial) virus. Kara was a little disappointed, in a way, that Alex wasn’t inspiring them to be more creative when it came to their cover stories. But she continued to collect and monitor these incidents, finding that more than 50% of the incidents happened around National City. She had already half-decided to move there after graduation when she saw the advertisement for a personal assistant to Cat Grant. She figured that might be the best job she could have in the city, with her finger on the pulse of every news story. It had to be the best place to find information on shadowy government agencies, right?

 

“Linda Lee. To see Miss Grant?” Kara said, as the guy with the prominent eyebrows and nice smile asked her what she was doing here.

 

“Wow. Did she fire her assistant again?” he asked, and Kara smiled.

 

“I’m not…”

 

A crying woman ran past them, and the guy winced.

 

“Guess so,” he said, before holding out a hand. “I’m Winn Schott. Nice to meet you…?”

 

“K… Linda,” Kara said, “like I said. Linda Lee, here to see Miss Grant.”

 

“Well, good luck, K’Linda,” he said, but there was no malice or curiosity on his face. Just making fun to try to get her to relax.

 

Cat Grant was terrifying. She stared at Kara like she was a mouse and Cat was a… well, cat. She even did the little butt-wiggle that a cat does before it pounces.

 

“So tell me, 10.15. Why should I hire you? What makes you so special?” Cat Grant said, managing to sound both venomous and bored. Kara stared at her for a moment, startled.

 

“I’m not,” she said, and that was the first thing she’d said to Cat that got her attention. “I’m ordinary, just like anyone else.”

 

And then she looked around the room, seeing a few items that Cat might not even know she needed. Like her almost empty Lexapro bottle in her handbag, and the pen in her hand that had just run dry.

 

“But I can, and will, do anything you need. Like making pharmacy runs, for example,” Kara said, and Cat peered into her own handbag, seeing that there were only 2 pills left. She looked mildly impressed.

 

“And I think your pen is running out,” Kara said, handing Cat a fresh one as she pressed down, the page remaining blank.

 

“Mmm,” Cat said, but she looked even more impressed. And more than a little suspicious.

 

“I will be at your beck and call, Miss Grant,” Kara said, before staring at the screen behind Cat where a woman in black clothing was hovering in the air above a forest fire, using freeze breath just like Kal’s. And Kara’s.

 

“Good. You start now,” Cat said, because her gaze had followed Kara’s and she knew that she had a story. She began issuing orders that Kara wrote down immediately, after finding a notebook in her bag. She figured she would work out how to do the things Miss Grant needed afterwards. Once Miss Grant let her go, Kara found her new friend, Winn, and he set her up with the IT access and contacts to do what Miss Grant wanted. Kara was far too busy to worry about the woman in black for the next 24 hours or so, but once she had collapsed into her AirBnB room in a stupor and slept off her first full day at CatCo, she found the news piece again and, while the figure was blurry and indistinct, she was sure she saw a slash of white through the figure’s dark hair.

 

“Aunt Astra?” she whispered, to herself, before cradling her abdomen in her arms, feeling like she was literally holding herself together. She didn’t know why Astra would suddenly start helping humans, now, but she was determined to find out if she could without gaining the attention of the men in black who’d tried to capture her before.

 

She didn’t know what to do, and work was absolutely slammed, so it was months before she had the opportunity to make any attempt to find her aunt. There had been sightings of the woman in black since the forest fire but Kara could never get there in time. She needed help, so she decided to talk to her new friend, Winn.

 

“Do you know of any way that a person could, perhaps, monitor police radio?” Kara asked, innocently.

 

Winn smiled up at her. He was always so happy to see her, and it had been a long time since anyone had been happy to see Kara. He smiled at her the way Alex used to.

 

“Hey, Linda! I haven’t seen you for a while,” he said, and she shrugged.

 

“It’s been busy, with this new superhero and all,” she said, and he nodded sympathetically.

 

“You’re doing really well,” he said. “Most of Miss Grant’s assistants were long gone at this stage.”

 

“Well, there’s still time for her to fire me. But she seems like she sort of likes me? Although she does think my name is Lynne. Or Laura. Or Laika, once,” Kara said thoughtfully.

 

“She calls me Witt. Or ‘the IT hobbit’,” Winn said, scratching his head. “I wouldn’t take it personally.”

 

“So, I was asking… do you know how I would go about monitoring police radio?” Kara asked, quietly, and Winn frowned.

 

“Why would you want to do that?” he asked.

 

Kara had a story prepared.

 

“Well, I studied journalism, and I was thinking that if I could get an interview with the woman in black, Miss Grant might consider giving me a job at the Tribune instead of as her assistant. Not that I don’t like being her assistant, but I would really like to work for the newspaper instead,” Kara lied.

 

“Wow. Well, in that case, pretty lady, I might be able to help you out,” he said, before blushing intensely as he realised what he’d said. “I mean, of course. I know a guy who sells old tech and he probably has  lots of old police scanners you could use to monitor… Just give me a sec.”

 

Suddenly Winn was concentrating, typing furiously, and a few seconds after that, something binged on his computer.

 

“Yes. I have a relatively new police scanner coming. I’ll grab it tonight and tomorrow you can start your search for National City’s newest hero,” Winn said.

 

“Thank you, Winn,” Kara said. He blushed again and she left him to his work, running to Miss Grant’s office because she’d just heard the security guard downstairs admit Miss Grant’s mother.

 

As it happened, she didn’t get a chance to use the police scanner. It was time for her check-in with Eliza, and she wanted to make sure that her foster mother was still in Maine where Kara had left her. Eliza was still a wild card, an unknown quantity, and Kara wanted her to be where she could find her.

 

She landed carefully, dressed all in black as she always was for these cross-continental flights. She always flew as low as she could, without being visible from the ground, using the terrain to hide her as much as possible. She normally would have x-rayed the house to find Eliza, and had she done that on this night it might have saved her. But she didn’t, because she was later than usual and expected Eliza to be in bed. She crept into the bedroom, seeing a shape under the bedcovers, and she went to shake the woman awake when she felt an unpleasantly familiar weakness and nausea hit her like a truck. She was on the floor, facedown, before she knew what had happened. She didn’t have time to be confused, because she felt a sting in her neck and then everything went dark.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some soulmates are united, but not necessarily in the way they would have wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter earns the warning for violence. When I read it back I surprised myself at how grim it was. It does get better, but for now, please read with caution.

* * *

 

Alex and Astra had been working together for a little while when Jeremiah Danvers appeared suddenly in the Nevada desert. Astra actually found him herself, during a flight she took to clear her head following a difficult mission that involved some of her former comrades-in-arms. She found Jeremiah crawling through the desert, delirious, and it was days before they could get any sense out of him. When he woke up, however, he had a story that had the potential to change both Alex and Astra’s lives.

 

He had woken up and fought with both Hank and Astra before Alex got there. He almost didn’t recognise her, either, but she was able to reassure him with shared details of their life before and after the appearance of soulmarks.

 

His story was long, and contained a lot of upsetting detail. But first, it contained a few surprises.

 

“I found Kara,” he said, and when Alex begged him for details, he frowned. “I guess she found me, would be more accurate.”

 

He told them about the night Kara showed up on his doorstep, not long after her 18th birthday, or so he’d worked out. However, he had been taken by Cadmus that night and forced to work for them, conducting horrifying experiments on aliens and creating human/alien hybrids using his knowledge of bioengineering and alien biology. He had been there for years, approximately eight or so, when Eliza Danvers appeared.

 

“What the hell was she doing there?” Alex asked, her face scrunched up in distaste.

 

“Not what you think,” Jeremiah had assured her. “Somehow, she got word of my disappearance, through some of my colleagues I think. She was hiding up somewhere in Maine, or so she said. She told Kara that you were dead, Alex,” he said, sadly, and Alex clenched her fists so hard that her fingernails cut bloody crescents into her palms.

 

“She told her you were dead, and for a while things were okay between them – Eliza told me that she tried to be a mother to Kara, for what it was worth. And then Kara turned 18, and her soulmark appeared. And it didn’t disappear right away, so Kara realised that you weren’t dead.”

 

Alex closed her eyes, breathing deeply, and she felt Astra’s hand sneak into hers, squeezing supportively.

 

“Kara took it badly, as you can imagine. She threatened to kill Eliza, which was pretty fair in the circumstances, because Eliza admitted that she was trying to get to some Kryptonite to sedate her. Kara ended up breaking her wrist, and threatened her with her heat vision. She went to college, I think for want of something better to do, and then she took a job at CatCo in National City.”

 

Alex was already moving to the door, ready to go to National City and find her soulmate. Jeremiah called her back.

 

“She’s not there, now. Kara’s… Cadmus has her,” Jeremiah said, and Alex turned, her face turning ashen.

 

“Is she still…? What have they done to her?” Alex asked, stumbling. Astra supported her, grasping her arms carefully.

 

“She’s alive. I was doing my best to protect her. So far they’ve only taken some blood and tissue. Eliza was trying to get her out, too, but she was only able to release me,” Jeremiah said. Alex slumped a little in Astra’s arms.

 

“It will be all right, Brave One,” Astra said, quietly. Alex let her head rest against Astra’s shoulder.

 

“I know where they are, Alex,” Jeremiah said. “I can tell you exactly where they are, and how many guards they have, and if we do this right we can save them both along with a lot of other aliens and we’ll take down Cadmus, too.”

 

Alex stared at him. This couldn’t be real, could it?

 

“It’s real, Alex,” Jeremiah said, quietly, and Alex realised she’d spoken out loud. “It’s real, and we can do this.”

 

The planning took several days, and Alex was struggling with the necessity of it, wanting only to go and rescue Kara and kill everyone who stood in their way. But she understood that Kara’s best chance was for them to execute a well-planned op. 

 

“What is it, Brave One?” Astra asked, one day when Alex had stormed out of the DEO control room into the shooting range. She’d already shot off two mags of rounds before Astra arrived, and upon the alien’s arrival she put her gun down, knowing how much it would hurt her Kryptonian ears.

 

“Nothing,” Alex said, flatly. Astra simply raised an eyebrow.

 

“Fine. I’m impatient. I’ve been apart from Kara for so long, Astra. All because of Eliza and her stupid thing about soulmates, or her homophobia, or both. We could have been together this whole time. And she took those years from us.”

 

“I know, Brave One. My soulmate is, or was, perhaps, sick. Jeremiah seems to think that she may have turned over a new twig.”

 

Despite herself, Alex snickered. Astra sighed.

 

“What was it this time?” Astra asked, giving Alex her patented long-suffering look.

 

“It’s a new leaf. Turned over a new leaf.”

 

“And this is different to what I said?”

 

“Yes. No. It doesn’t matter,” Alex said, sighing.

 

“At least your heart rate has slowed,” Astra said. “In any case, your father says that Eliza has changed. Something to do with her soulmark. They burned it from her flesh when she arrived, as it was of extraterrestrial origin. But the following day it healed, the flesh unmarred. She believed after that incident that the soulmark was a mark of true love. She told Jeremiah that she was sorry, and she let him go as soon as she was able to arrange a way to do so.”

 

“Yeah,” Alex said, nodding. “He told me.”

 

“And yet you are still angry,” Astra pointed out.

 

“Ten years, Astra. Kara is twenty-six years old, now. And humans don’t live that long. Kara might live forever, under a yellow sun, but I won’t,” Alex said. “Ten years is a lot of time, to me. And I love Kara. So, so much. Eliza took so much from us both,” she said, and her eyes were filling with tears. Astra nodded, her face impassive.

 

“My soulmate has much to answer for,” she said, with a sigh. “I am very sorry for the pain she has caused to you and to my niece.”

 

“It’s not your fault, Astra,” Alex said, shaking her head.

 

“Indeed it is not. Nonetheless, I am sorry that Eliza Danvers hurt you so deeply. I do not believe her intention was to hurt anyone; but that does not change the result.”

 

Alex shook her head in amusement. Astra would never change. She had a tenuous grip of human expressions and of human emotion, and was logical to a fault. She was glad they’d never acted on their mutual attraction. If things worked out with the rescue, it would make for some awkward family dinners.

 

It was just then that Hank came to find them both.

 

“It’s time,” he said, his eyes flashing red, and they turned to follow him. It was show time.

 

***

 

When Kara woke, she was in a glass room, a little like Cat Grant’s fishbowl of an office, but much less comfortable. There was an alien in the room next to her, a Bolian if she remembered correctly. He had a blue face, anyway, and he clearly had a nervous disposition.

 

“What the…” she started talking, loudly, and he shushed her nervously.

 

“Don’t shout. That makes them hurt us,” he said, in English. Bolians were good at language, or so she vaguely remembered.

 

“How did I get here?” she asked, quietly.

 

“This is Cadmus, honey. You aren’t just a pretty blonde cheerleader, I’m assuming, or else you wouldn’t be here,” he said.

 

“No. Kryptonian,” she said, pointing at herself ruefully. She was under Kryptonite lights, by the green light surrounding her and the nausea and weakness she was feeling.

 

“Oh yeah, like Superman?” he said, interestedly.

 

“Yeah,” she nodded.

 

“Do you know him?” the Bolian asked.

 

“Not really,” Kara said, ruefully. He might be her cousin but she had probably exchanged more words with the blue dude next to her already than she ever had with Kal-El.

 

“Shame. I was kind of hoping he might be looking for you, and that he’d break us all out,” he said, looking dejected.

 

“Sorry,” Kara said, ruefully. It seemed like Eliza had betrayed her, so that probably meant there was no-one in the world who knew where she was, let alone anyone who would look for her. If Alex knew where she was, that would be a different matter. But there was no way for Alex to know, thanks to Eliza. 

 

Tegaren, her Bolian neighbour, was chatty and friendly, and so very, very gay. He had a human boyfriend, but since most aliens lived underground, there was no-one for his boyfriend to go to. No-one who would care about aliens going missing. There were hundreds of them here, from this galaxy and the surrounding ones.

 

“They even have a Dominator. I mean, don’t they know what they’re playing with?” he asked, his face creased up in fear.

 

Kara shrugged. The doctors here kept taking her blood and skin, and giving her a few seconds of sunlight to regenerate before turning her Kryptonite restraints back on. They only fed her a human’s required calories each day, which meant she was lethargic all of the time, and losing weight and muscle. She didn’t know how much longer her body would stay alive, given the way it was consuming itself. Death by Dominator would be a blessing from Rao, at this point.

 

A week after that conversation, they took Tegaren away for some tests, leaving Kara alone in the small cell area. She let herself drift, hoping for Rao to take her away peacefully. But instead, he brought her salvation.

 

“Kara! KARA!”

 

She looked up, her muscles moving sluggishly, to see Jeremiah Danvers outside her cell.

 

“Jeremiah,” she said, the word slurring. Her eyes closed of their own accord.

 

“Kara. I have food. Please, eat. I’ll bring you more. I’m going to make sure you stay alive, honey. Alex needs you.”

 

He put some wrapped protein bars in through the slot in her cell door, and she threw herself forward, stuffing them into her mouth, only barely unwrapping them. She felt better already, and he nodded encouragingly.

 

“I’ll bring more every day, honey. I can’t get you out – I don’t know how – but I can keep you alive. Alex is looking for you. She’s been looking for you since Eliza took you away. I promise you I will do everything I can to get you back to her.”

 

Kara slumped back against the wall of the cell.

 

“Alex,” she said, before she fell asleep, her belly full for the first time in weeks.

 

Jeremiah kept his promises. Each day when Tegaren was gone, he brought protein bars to help Kara rebuild the muscle her body was cannabalising to keep her alive. She grew stronger, her muscles no longer wasted. They still took her blood and muscle and other tissue on a daily basis, but other than that they left her alone.

 

It wasn’t until a while later that she found out why.

 

“Kara,” came a familiar voice from the door of her cell, another day when Tegaren was being tested. Kara looked up from her half-slumber to see Eliza Danvers standing there in a lab coat. Kara just looked at the woman, her eyes narrowing.

 

“Kara, I know what you must think of me. But I… I’ve changed. I’m here because I started looking for Jeremiah. They caught me and they tortured me. I told them about you, so they would stop. But I swear, I never told them what name you were living under. They must have been waiting for you to come back to my house,” Eliza said. “Listen. I have to go. But don’t show them any of your abilities, please. I told them that because you came to earth later than Superman, you only had impenetrable skin and no other powers. Don’t tell them, or they’ll hurt you a lot, Kara. They’re only taking blood from you now because they think it will help them make self-healing soldiers, but if they know you have the rest of his powers… they might very well kill you. I’m so sorry, Kara,” she said, and then she was gone.

 

Kara had no reason to believe Eliza, but she also had no reason to volunteer information to her captors, either. So she said nothing, as she had since the first day, on Tegaren’s advice.

 

So she stayed relatively well. Others did not do so well, given what she heard during her time in the rooms where they took her blood and tissue. There were screams and mechanical noises that sounded like saws and other medical instruments. Tegaren and Jeremiah had both told her that there were alien/human hybrids being made here, and she was glad that it wasn’t her eyes or hands or legs being removed to make the perfect soldier for the US government.

 

Days passed slowly there, but it was too soon already when Tegaren told her that he was scheduled to die the next day. Her cell buddy had become her best friend, and he was keeping her sane.

 

“Kara. You have to stay strong,” he said, his wan face contorted into an attempt at a smile. “I need you to find Ben, once this is all over, and tell him. Tell him I wasn’t afraid. That I went into the last embrace of the two brothers with dignity. Even if I don’t,” he said.

 

“I can’t lose you too, T,” Kara said, tears flooding down her face.

 

“You won’t. I’ll always be with you, Kara Zor-El,” he said, touching his neck, where the Bolian heart lay.

 

“I love you, Tegaren,” Kara choked out.

 

“I love you too, Kara, and if I wasn’t as gay as a female tennis player, I would have taken you in a manly fashion any time you asked,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

 

“I think I’m too much woman for you,” Kara said, laughing despite herself. “I will miss you so bad, Tegaren. I swear I will honour you for the rest of my life,” she said, touching her throat delicately.

 

The following morning, Tegaren did what he said. He went into the last embrace of the two brothers, his homeworld’s gods, with dignity and strength. Kara was not so lucky. Because later that day, she, too, was taken into the same medical room where they’d taken Tegaren.

 

“Well, hello, little Kryptonian,” a tall woman said, striding into the room. Behind her, there were two soldiers dragging a half-conscious Eliza Danvers with them.

 

“I am Lillian Luthor. And it appears that your foster mother has been holding out on us,” Lillian said, gesturing for the soldiers to bring Eliza closer. Eliza lifted her head, and Kara gasped. Eliza’s face was a mass of bruises and blood. “We’re going to have to see what we can find out from that biology of yours. I might take those pretty eyes of yours for my collection; see what makes them shoot out those lasers,” Lillian said, touching Kara’s face delicately. Kara spat at her.

 

“You’re a monster.”

 

“No, my dear. The only monsters here are you and your alien friends. Coming here, pretending to be our saviours, waiting for an opportunity to destroy and enslave us all,” Lillian said, her words coming out in a hiss. She was clearly a lunatic, like her son, who’d tried (and in fact succeeded, however temporarily) to kill Kal-El.

 

“Kara. I’m sorry. I helped Jeremiah. He got out,” Eliza said, and Lillian Luthor backhanded her casually, knocking her unconscious.

 

“Take her to the next cell. I’ll deal with her later,” Lillian said, before pulling up a surgical mask to cover her face. “Now, my dear. Let’s see what it takes to make Superman’s cousin scream.”

 

Kara managed to stay silent for what felt like an eternity. By the end of Lillian’s experiments that day, however, she had no voice left.

 

She wept quietly in her cell, looking out at the world through one ruined eye, blood and other fluids running down her face. She prayed that Rao would take her quickly, so that she wouldn’t have to endure this hell for long.

 

***

 

It was go time, and Alex had suited up, her kryptonite suit glowing against the dark of the Nevada desert. Astra was to be their inside man. She had been inoculated against kryptonite using a compound that Alex had been working on, and she was immune for the next 36 hours or so. She’d also been injected with a different radioactive compound that allowed her to be tracked using Lord Technologies satellites. The DEO team – hundreds of them – were waiting for Astra to be taken inside of the facility, for her to start wreaking havoc before they converged on the base. Thanks to Jeremiah’s intel, they had every entrance and exit to the Cadmus headquarters covered. No-one was getting out without a DEO escort.

 

Alex watched, her heart in her throat, as the tiny dot on her tablet was brought right into the heart of Cadmus.

 

“Okay. Teams A, B, C, move in on my mark. Teams D, E, F – stand by to move in and block all exits. Weapons hot,” Alex said, and the people around her tensed. “Mark.”

 

The battle was intense, but short. Cadmus didn’t have enough soldiers to fight the DEO troops, and once they began letting the alien prisoners free, they fought sidy-by-side with the DEO agents. Alex was clearing one of the last rooms when she heard J’onn calling for her. She followed his directions and found a tall woman standing over Kara. Kara, with one ruined eye, her tongue cut out. Kara, with her torso flayed open. The tall woman had a gun.

 

“Kryptonite bullets, I assure you,” the woman said, and Alex dropped her weapon immediately. “This will end her suffering. As her soulmate, I would think you would want that.”

 

“Please,” Alex begged. “Please. Don’t do this.”

 

“She is dying. I’ve taken out most of her organs. She has virtually no chance of survival,” the woman said, shrugging. Alex saw Astra enter the room behind her.

 

“Kryptonians are stronger than you believe. My niece is much stronger than you think,” Astra said, snarling.

 

Lillian Luthor laughed.

 

“Your niece. You must be the crazed aunt who wanted to enslave humanity. We found records in Superman’s ship. You Kryptonians were an impressive race, before you destroyed yourselves,” Lillian said, smirking. “You can’t come any closer, Astra In-Ze. You will die along with her. I have Kryptonite in my pockets, too.

 

“You have?” Astra shrank back, pretending to be afraid. “Where did you find this demon rock?”

 

“We’ve been harvesting it from around the world,” Lillian said, with a feral smile. “We will destroy you all, filthy aliens, all of you.”

 

“You cannot hope to stand against us,” Astra said, lazily. “You have already lost.”

 

Lillian’s eyes widened, and for a second Alex was sure Astra wasn’t going to be quick enough. But she was. Lillian’s finger tightened on the trigger but then there was a loud crack, and Astra was standing behind her, holding the now-dead woman up by her broken neck.

 

Alex rushed forward, grasping Kara’s face in her hands gently.

 

“Kara. Kara, honey. We’re going to get you out of here. We’re going to get you better. I promise,” she said, tears filling her eyes as she took in the depth of Kara’s injuries. God only knew what had happened to her in this hellhole.

 

Kara just looked at her, unable to speak. She lifted one hand, touching Alex’s face.

 

“I love you,” Alex said, and Kara nodded. It was all Alex needed, at least for now. They needed to get Kara back to the DEO, to the healing technology they’d developed when Astra joined them.

 

***

 

Astra carried Eliza Danvers in her arms the whole way to the DEO, sitting next to Alex in the ambulance.

 

“She will be fine. My niece is stronger than any of us,” Astra said, her eyes steady on Alex’s. Kara’s eyes were closed, her body damaged enough that she could no longer keep herself conscious. Her body was flooded with sedatives and anaesthetics. Alex couldn’t look at Kara’s face. Her eye was gone, her beautiful left eye. And two fingers on her left hand.

 

“They tried to remove her soulmark. It grew back,” Eliza said, suddenly. “So did mine. They did it over, and over, and over. It just kept growing back, the skin perfect. It made Lillian so angry.”

 

“You are safe now, zrhueiao,” Astra said, and Eliza looked up at her.

 

“You’re her. Astra,” Eliza breathed, and Astra nodded, looking at her soulmate gravely. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to believe. And then the mark kept coming back. I got Jeremiah out of there, but I don’t love him anymore.”

 

“All will be well, my soul’s mate. I require nothing from you that you do not wish to give,” Astra said, touching Eliza’s bruised face gently. Alex looked away, feeling like she was intruding on an incredibly private moment. Much as she hated Eliza for what she’d done to her and to Kara, she didn’t begrudge her this happiness, if she chose to accept what Astra offered.

 

She looked down at Kara again, wincing at her ruined eye and the blood caked around her face. They’d cut out her tongue. Why would they do that? Why would they hurt her like this? Alex didn’t understand. How could they hurt someone so pure and beautiful this way? She wept silently, holding Kara’s hand. The woman lying in front of her, half-dead and half-blind, was still more beautiful than anyone else she’d ever met. Alex prayed to Rao for Kara to live. She didn’t believe in God, any God. But Kara believed, so she prayed in Kara’s place, hoping that if Rao was listening, he would keep Kara alive, for Alex’s sake. Selfish though it might be, she prayed anyway.

 

Two days later, Kara was under the sun lamps, still being kept unconscious. Her body was responding well and showing some tentative signs of healing – healing beyond what they would have expected, even from a Kryptonian.

 

“Alex, is she regrowing her fingers?” Astra asked, looking at Kara’s hand, where the stumps that had once held fingers appeared to be larger than they had been the day before.

 

“I can’t be sure, Astra. But I think so,” Alex said. She used one of Kara’s lines to take a blood sample away for analysis. She wasn’t sure, but she thought there might be something she could synthesise that would increase Kara’s body’s healing factor. She wandered off to her lab after checking that Astra was staying with Kara. She didn’t want Kara to wake up alone.

 

Alex was glad she had work to concentrate on. Otherwise she would be spending all of her time looking at the wrecked body that had once belonged to her soulmate. It was Eliza’s fault they’d spent all this time apart, but there was also Lillian Luthor and her Cadmus cohorts to blame. If she thought about it too much, Alex felt like she was going mad. Kara was her Stargirl, the one person she should have been protecting, and she’d failed. So she threw herself into her work, finding ways to promote and accelerate the healing process for Kara. Bioengineering was different from being a soldier, of course, but it was still a fight of sorts. Fighting against biology, against the immune system of the species involved, trying to create solutions to problems without causing a dozen more.

 

On the third day of Kara’s long sleep, Eliza knocked on the door of Alex’s lab.

 

“Hi,” Alex said neutrally, trying not to let her extremely mixed feelings about her mother into her tone or her expression. From Eliza’s wince, she figured she’d probably failed.

 

“I know you probably don’t want me here, but I have a lot of knowledge about Kara’s biology and the biology of some of the other aliens Cadmus was holding. A few of them have volunteered to give skin or blood samples if it helps. And there’s something else you need to know,” Eliza said, looking at Alex anxiously.

 

“And what is that?” Alex asked coolly, turning her body fully towards her mother, her arms folded across her chest.

 

“There’s a young woman here, who was being held by Cadmus. I believe you know her kind as metahumans? She has a gift, for telekinesis and for healing,” Eliza said.

 

“Do you think she can help Kara?” Alex asked, eager and feeling hope leap in her chest.

 

“I do. The only thing is – she’s Lillian Luthor’s daughter,” Eliza said.

 

“No. Fuck that. No. That woman… she nearly killed Kara. She may be damaged for life, Mom. There’s no fucking way I’m letting anyone…”

 

“Honey. She’s not like her mother. I met her. Got to know her. Her mother adopted her when she was four, and when she found out that the girl had powers she locked her up here. She’s been experimenting on the girl for years,” Eliza said, and Alex’s heart clenched. She hadn’t meant to call Eliza ‘Mom’.

 

“I… I’ll think about it,” Alex said, stiffly. Eliza nodded.

 

“Will you have a look at my research?” Eliza asked.

 

“Yes. Anything that will help Kara,” Alex agreed. She wasn’t enthusiastic, but she would look at any information that might help Kara to be whole again.

 

It took several days, and several meetings with Lena Luthor, who was in a room in the bowels of the DEO – not a cell, just a room – before Alex was happy with their plans. First, the compound that she had synthesised with Eliza’s help using Kara’s own cells. Then Lena would use her power, whatever it was, to fill up Kara’s cells with whatever healing energy she exuded. And finally, a cocoon woven by a species Alex had never come across before, and was itching to study. Related to the Hellgrammites, these insectoids were more like butterflies. They used their ability to weave a cocoon around their own bodies or those of other injured members of their species (and others, as on this occasion) to heal from wounds that might otherwise kill them. Given the severity of the damage to Kara’s body, Alex didn’t doubt that the third step was necessary. What Lillian Luthor had done was… sickening.

 

Alex met Lena Luthor the day after Eliza suggested her involvement. She brought J’onn with her. He argued with her, because he had so much to do that he’d been awake around the clock for days, figuring out which aliens were threats and which weren’t, for one thing, dealing with the fallout of taking down a rogue government agency and rooting out those responsible for bankrolling it, and handling the President and her representatives who seemed to want updates every few minutes.

 

“Agent Danvers, I haven’t got the time right now,” he’d barked. She just looked at him, and she knew he was picking up on her surface thoughts, on the desperation in them, when he sighed. “Fine. But just once, so you know she’s being truthful. Then it’s up to you to convince yourself.”

 

He had explained to Lena that he could read her mind, and the woman, thin beyond belief but still incredibly beautiful, simply nodded. He put a hand on hers and she smiled at him, offering him her complete trust.

 

When Alex told her what Lillian had done, her beautiful green eyes went flat and deadly, and some of the objects in the room started spinning around their heads erratically.

 

“I’m sorry, Agent,” she said, as she closed her eyes, concentrating fiercely. The dirty coffee mug and pens and other objects landed softly on the desk. “I haven’t got complete control of my telekinesis, yet. And mention of…”

 

“Your mother,” Alex supplied helpfully. Lena’s eyes went flat again, and she grasped at J’onn’s hand on her arm to ground herself.

 

“Please don’t call her that,” Lena asked, her voice surprisingly soft. “That woman was my jailer. She hated me more than anyone except Superman. And, it seems, your patient. Because she hurt me just as much as she hurt this girl you’re telling me about, I can assure you. Anything I can do to help her, I will do, to my dying breath,” she confirmed, her voice strong. J’onn caught Alex’s eye and nodded.

 

“She means that, literally,” he said, in his deep, strong voice, and Alex relaxed. She came to see Lena Luthor again during the following days, finding her interesting and diverting.

 

_Kara would like her…_

 

When Alex found herself thinking that, she shut the line of thought down. Kara wasn’t here, not really. That shell of a person in the med bay wasn’t Kara, or at least not yet. It was up to Alex to fix her.

 

“She will live, Agent Danvers. She will thrive, and your life together will be long,” Lena said, and when Alex looked up at her in surprise, she saw that Lena’s eyes were flat again, unfocused. She blinked, then.

 

“I’m sorry. I said something. It was a prediction, I think. I have a lot of powers, some of which I can control and some that I can’t,” Lena explained.

 

Alex shivered. That had to be unpleasant.

 

“Yes, it is. Having the power to see other’s futures is not something I relish. I am… different enough,” Lena said, frowning.

 

It took Alex a moment, but she realised that she hadn’t spoken out loud, but Lena had apparently heard her anyway.

 

“I’m telepathic too, Agent Danvers. And you were projecting, because you are sympathetic to me. Normally I hear very little from you. Your friend J’onn has trained you well.”

 

Lena’s eyes were otherworldly. Alex nodded, and went back to drinking her coffee. She had a lot of work to do.

 

“Come with me,” Alex said, when she had finished her drink. “I’d like you to meet our other healer.”

 

Lena followed her while Alex tried to work out why she’d said that. When she entered the room, however, she saw Lena grab her wrist, hissing. And the not-Hellgrammite – Ale’ara, did the same.

 

_Oh…_

Alex had never been in the room when two soulmates met before, let alone two so different. Ale’ara was almost pink in colour, no ears to speak of (her hearing organs were on her thorax) and her eyes were abnormally wide and unblinking. And Lena was possibly the whitest woman alive, with dark bruises under her ridiculously bright eyes and lips the colour of red wine. Alex stood back, watching as the two women (was Ale’ara female? She made a mental note to ask.) approached each other in awe.

 

“You are Lena Luthor,” Ale’ara said, her head ducking as if to make her less intimidating.

 

“I am,” Lena said. Her tone was regretful, perhaps because of the “Luthor” appended to her name. But Ale’ara was not deterred.

 

“I am Ale’ara. From the Hellgrammite planet, an offshoot race. We call ourselves the Leptiré,” the tall, pink creature said, moving slowly closer to Lena, her eyes never blinking.

 

“This is your name, in your language?” Lena asked, holding out her right arm. There was an unusual script on it, one even Alex had never seen. It seemed to be made up of spheres and lines.

 

“Yes,” the alien said.

 

“My mother burned this off a hundred times,” Lena breathed, and the tall alien hissed, a strange gray, thin tongue appearing from her small mouth. How would they even kiss, Alex wondered. And then she turned her mind to other things. This was a private moment, and not hers to observe.

 

Alex left Lena to talk to her newly-discovered soulmate, moving to Kara’s side, finding her own soulmate unmoving, still. Her fingers were clearly re-growing, bone and muscle regenerating and knitting together. Given long enough under the sun lamps, she might not even need this treatment. Her lost body parts would regenerate. Even her eye and her tongue. But Alex wasn’t prepared to wait. Kara deserved to be healed, to live, to be happy. What Lillian Luthor had done to her was monstrous.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara's healing is completed and Alex and Kara are reunited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So after all the angst of the last chapter, here's my attempt at fluff, to make up for it.

* * *

 

Alex took some readings and, satisfied, left the room with its ever-present DEO guards – visible and invisible – and went to the training room to work out some of her aggression. Every time she looked at Kara she needed to clear her mind again before she was able to work. She entered the room, finding it occupied by her mother and Astra, who appeared to be teaching Eliza the fundamentals of defending herself. Eliza was surprisingly fierce, her teeth bared, and Astra was letting the other woman punch her wildly.

 

“What’s going on?” Alex asked warily.

 

“Eliza found some of Lillian Luthor’s notes,” Astra said, mildly, while Eliza pummelled her torso, her jaw tight.

 

“Oh. And?”

 

“She took Kara’s tongue in retaliation for Kal-El’s ‘silencing’ of her son,” Astra said. Her eyes were darker than Alex had ever seen them. Normally they were like shards of glass. Now they looked like the sea in a storm.

 

“Silencing? Kal-El just put him in fucking jail,” Alex said. “The fucker can still talk. He murdered thousands of people.”

 

“I know,” Astra said, patiently. It was clear that she had already had this conversation with Eliza.

 

“Is there anything else we should know?” Alex asked.

 

“Some of the bodies that were recovered were attempts at a Kryptonian/human hybrid. A soldier. They used some of Kara’s skin and blood only, at first, but since Jeremiah’s escape they used organs and… her eye. That one yet lives,” Astra said, and Alex shuddered.

 

“Where?”

 

“J’onn has him. He calls himself Metallo. He has a Kryptonite core in place of a heart, and they successfully merged Kara’s biology with his so he can use her heat vision power.”

 

Astra’s voice was tight, controlled.

 

“And J’onn is going to let this stand?” Alex snapped, outraged.

 

“J’onn is trying to discern his intentions. The man did not choose to be altered in this way,” Astra said stiffly. “And your President is interested in his abilities,” she added, as if the President was a cockroach she hadn’t yet stepped on.

 

Eliza had stopped hitting Astra, finally, and was sitting on the floor, breathing heavily.

 

“Come, brave one. Spar with me,” Astra said, making a beckoning gesture.

 

“Fine. But let’s make this fair. Did your shot wear off?” Alex asked, crossing to the Kryptonite controls.

 

“Yes,” Astra said.

 

Alex switched on the synthetic Kryptonite emitters, watching carefully until Astra told her to stop.

 

“Come. Let us use our bodies to purge ourselves of this hatred,” Astra said, and Alex nodded, taking some tape from her pocket to wrap her hands.

 

One hour later, both Alex and Astra were sweat-covered and exhausted. They were almost evenly matched when Kryptonite emitters were not in play. Astra had years of training, but Alex was proficient in almost all of earth’s hand-to-hand combat skills, plus a couple of alien disciplines. DEO training was thorough, especially as an Agent climbed through the ranks. Astra nodded in respect as they both sat on the training mats, stretching and wincing at the pleasant aches in their muscles. Astra’s would disappear once the emitters were off, but Alex was still human.

 

“You’re very skilled,” Eliza said, looking from Astra to Alex. “I had no idea.”

 

“I was a General on Krypton,” Astra said softly. “And Alexandra is a skilled soldier. I would have welcomed her as my second, and I do not say that lightly. Especially about a human.”

 

“You’re not a fan of humans, then?” Eliza asked, almost shyly. Alex decided that was her cue to leave. She didn’t think she’d appreciate listening to her mother and Astra getting to know each other. Part of her still didn’t think that Eliza deserved happiness, or the love of someone like Astra In-Ze. But it wasn’t Alex’s choice to make. And she knew that Kara would forgive Eliza, so Alex would probably have to, one way or another.

 

Alex left them with a lazy wave, going to shower in her private bathroom and getting re-dressed in a fresh uniform before heading to her lab to finalise the details of the protocol they were planning to use on Kara. The compound was almost ready.

 

She went to the med bay a little later, consulting with Dr Hamilton and slowly weaning Kara off the anaesthetic they’d been using for the past few days. Kara woke after an hour or so, opening her one good eye and looking up at Alex. She looked like something was… missing. A spark; something that made her that ray of sunshine Alex loved so deeply. Her Stargirl.  

 

“Kara. We woke you because we’re going to try some new treatments. I’m pretty confident that you have a good chance of regenerating all that you’ve… lost. All that she did to you.”

 

A tear slipped from Kara’s eye and she turned away.

 

“No, Kara. Trust me. We’re going to fix this. We’re together now, Kara. Nothing is ever going to take you away from me again,” Alex said, and Kara turned after a second to look at her. She nodded, looking resigned, but there was no hope in her expression. Alex leaned down to kiss her forehead.

 

“Sleep, Stargirl. You’ll be better when you wake up.”

 

Alex pushed some more meds into Kara’s IV, watching as she slipped back into unconsciousness. Alex took the serum and pushed that, too, into the IV.

 

“Okay Lena, Ale’ara,” Alex said briskly, wiping tears from her eyes quickly. “You’re up.”

 

She turned and Lena touched her arm.

 

“We’ll fix this, Agent Danvers. I promise you,” the woman said. She was looking better, her cheeks red and the bruises under her eyes less prominent.

 

“Thank you,” Alex said quietly, and Lena did _something_ then, a little pulse of something that shot through Alex’s body, warming as it went.

 

“All will be well,” Lena said, and her eyes were flat, blank, again. Despite how unnerving it was to see her like that, it somehow made Alex feel better. Because that look meant it was a prophecy, not just a simple reassurance.

 

“Step back, Agent Danvers,” Ale’ara said, her insectoid mandibles making the ‘S’ sounds longer.

 

Alex stepped back and watched. Eliza and Astra, J’onn, and even Jeremiah – in a wheelchair – had arrived silently. Astra moved silently, standing beside Alex and taking her hand. Astra’s hand was unnaturally warm, like Kara’s, and that thought, too, made Alex feel better. She couldn’t have said why, but it did.

 

The insectoid alien shuddered and something in the air around her changed. Alex felt like she had something in her eye for a moment because everything was blurry. And then Ale’ara was standing there with what looked like a full set of butterfly wings. More than a full set. There were… six wings, all overlapping. They looked like crystal, clear but with opalescent colours marbling through them. They pulsed with the alien’s heartbeat – or whatever sort of circulatory system she possessed. Or they. Alex still wasn’t sure about Ale’ara’s gender. But whatever Ale’ara was, it was beautiful. She started to make a high-pitched keening noise that made the small bones in Alex’s ear vibrate unpleasantly.

 

Lena nodded at Ale’ara as if she’d said something – she hadn’t, or at least not that Alex could see – and then she raised her hands. There was nothing much to see, just a sort of shimmer in the air surrounding Kara – but Alex could feel the backwash of Lena’s power, and it made all of the hair on her arms stand on end.

 

“She is strong, this Luthor child,” Astra murmured, near Alex’s ear. Alex nodded, not taking her eyes off the scene before her.

 

The alien unfurled her wings then, and Alex suddenly realised why Ale’ara had asked her to move back. Her wingspan must have been at least 8 feet. And since Ale’ara herself was so tall, she took up what felt like half of the room. Alex stepped back a little more as the began to hover, her wings a blur. She began the keening noise again and then there were more limbs appearing from nowhere, insectoid limbs, and she was weaving something in a blur, something that somehow contained and held Lena’s powers within it. Alex could feel without actually knowing that Lena’s powers and the cocoon were acting in concert to expand and increase the strength of the healing. Alex began to feel some hope that she might get her Kara back through this process. After she’d seen the ruined body of her soulmate, she’d felt like she’d lost Kara entirely, because how could anyone come back from that? But now, she felt like maybe there was a chance to get Kara back, whole and hale and hearty.

 

“She will heal,” Astra said, with wonder in her voice, and Alex could only nod. Kara would heal, and then they would finally be able to talk, to have the union they were meant to have when Kara turned eighteen. Because there’d never been anyone else for Alex – she’d scratched an itch, now and then, with anonymous men and women, but it had never meant anything at all. Kara was everything to her.

 

When the cocoon was fully woven, Astra waited until everyone else had left and turned to Alex.

 

“You must go to your apartment, Brave One. You must wash and eat and sleep. And when you return, my niece will be well and you will be together with your soulmate for the first time in a decade. Meeting your soulmate is an important time and you do not get… what do you call it? A do-under?”

 

Alex smiled at that. Astra always seemed to manage to make her smile.

 

“A do-over,” she corrected, and Astra nodded gravely.

 

“Yes. You will not be afforded a chance for a do-over. You must be at your best. I will stand guard over my niece until such times as she awakens. The Luthor girl will be here, and the pink one. We will assure her safety.”

 

Alex looked at the three of them. Lena, still sending power into the cocoon, and the butterfly-like alien, still hovering. And Astra, resolute, her arms crossed. If anyone got past her to hurt Kara, Alex would be stunned.

 

“Thank you, Astra. I’ll do what you suggest. Call me if anything changes, please?”

 

Astra nodded, and Alex squeezed her arm for a moment before leaving. J’onn met her outside and told her to sign out downstairs as she was going to be gone for at least four days.

 

“Four days? How did you come up with that number?” she asked, confused.

 

“You know when Ms Luthor looks at you that way, with the eyes?” J’onn asked.

 

“Yeah,” Alex said, repressing a shudder with some difficulty.

 

“She told me you’d return in four days when your mate woke up,” he said, shrugging.

 

“Okay then. Guess I better go sign out,” Alex said.

 

She slept for 36 hours, with two visits to the bathroom in there somewhere. Apparently the stress had been weighing on her more than she’d realised. When she woke up she ate a huge meal from the local Chinese restaurant, and chuckled as she ate a portion of potstickers. If Kara remained in her life as Alex hoped she would, she’d probably never get to eat a whole order of potstickers to herself for the rest of her life. She had no regrets about that; none whatsoever.

 

She had a long shower and went to a local place for a haircut, and watched a little of her Netflix queue before heading back to bed for another 12 hours. Then more food. Then a lather, rinse, repeat of day 3. On day 4, she was curled up on the couch watching a documentary about sloths that she was pretty sure Kara would love when her phone rang. It was Astra.

 

“Alexandra. Kara is awakening. She will want to see your face when she opens her eyes for the first time,” Astra said gently.

 

Alex choked back tears, trying to get out words like ‘okay’ or ‘I’ll be right there’ but she just made a weird noise that Astra seemingly interpreted correctly.

 

“All will be well, Alexandra,” she said, and then she hung up. Alex took several deep breaths before going to her bedroom and dressing carefully, picking out a nice shirt and jeans instead of her usual DEO garb. She didn’t want to meet Kara again while dressed for battle. She added her favourite leather jacket and messed with her hair for a few seconds before giving up and heading out, grabbing her bike and taking the shortest route. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She felt like she had when she realised – for those few seconds before Eliza had dragged her away – that Kara was her soulmate. The person she was fated to spend the rest of her life with. The person who’d literally come from the stars, even been lost, frozen in time, just to get to earth at the right time to meet Alex Danvers. It was all highly improbable. Alex was a scientist and she’d tried to calculate the odds a few times, but even she had run out of patience with the huge numbers involved.

 

She reached the DEO quickly and parked in her designated spot, leaving her helmet with her bike. There was no way anything would get stolen in this building, and all of the agents were way too frightened of Alex to even contemplate stealing from her. She made her way through the various security checkpoints, allowing the guards to test her blood to make sure she wasn’t a shapeshifter. They’d learned, after the White Martian incidents. And then there were no more barriers. It was time to meet her soulmate. Again.

 

She entered the room quietly, finding Astra and Eliza standing close to one another at one end of the room, and Lena and her new soulmate at the other. The cocoon seemed to be becoming see-through – it had been what looked like straw-like tendrils, but opaque. And now it was degrading, somehow.

 

“She will wake, soon, Agent,” Ale’ara said, her strange tongue-thingie flickering a bit like a snake’s. Alex nodded politely. Lena was still in some sort of healing trance, or so it appeared. Whatever happened, she had clearly worked extremely hard on healing Kara. Alex took a deep breath and Astra came to take her hand once again.

 

“Thank you,” Alex said, not looking at Astra, but she felt the other woman nod.

 

“You are most welcome, Alexandra.”

 

Eliza stayed in the corner but Alex could feel her mother’s eyes on her. She wasn’t willing or even able to acknowledge the woman right now, but she didn’t feel like throwing her out, either, so she just ignored her presence.

 

The cocoon began to shiver, more of the straw turning transparent, and then it just shimmered out of existence. Alex moved closer carefully, taking Kara’s hand when she reached her. It was her left hand that had been missing fingers, and now they were there, fully re-grown, looking pristine. And her eyes… she was stirring and there was movement behind each lid. Despite the seeming impossibility of it all, Kara had regrown eyes and fingers. Now they just had to check if her tongue and internal organs had regrown normally.

 

Alex’s arm started to burn, where her soulmark was. Like it had when it first appeared. Because she and Kara had been separated when Kara turned eighteen, their soulmarks had never been in close proximity to one another – or at least, not without one of them being close to death. Once a couple met, their soulmarks deepened, changed and became colourful in a way that reflected the personality of the person and their mate. That hadn’t happened yet for them, but it was apparently about to. Alex took a deep breath and stroked Kara’s face gently. Kara’s eyes opened, slowly – both of them – and she looked up at Alex.

 

“Alex…” she managed, her voice tiny and weak. Alex let out another sigh of relief.

 

“Kara,” she breathed, leaning forward and kissing Kara’s forehead gently. “I have missed you so much.”

 

Kara sat up, slowly, clearly still weak as a kitten, but healed. She was healed, and whole, and that was all that mattered. She put her arms around Alex’s waist, her head on Alex’s shoulder, and pressed her lips to the juncture of Alex’s neck and shoulder. Alex shivered.

 

“I think that’s our cue to leave,” Lena said, quietly, but Alex could hear the smile in her voice. She held out a hand behind her and felt Lena take it and squeeze it gently, before leaving with the rest of the people in the room. Finally, Alex and Kara were alone. For the first time in almost ten years, she had Kara in her arms.

 

“I missed you so much,” she breathed, turning her head a little to bury her nose in Kara’s hair. She smelled like sweat and something sharp and medicinal, but underneath that was her own scent, the scent that used to lull Alex to sleep every single night.

 

“She told me you were dead, Alex,” Kara said, brokenly, her hands gripping at Alex’s shirt spasmodically.

 

“I know, Kara. I know exactly what she did,” Alex said, sighing, her nose still in Kara’s hair.

 

“I almost killed her,” Kara admitted.

 

“I know. It’s lucky I don’t have your powers, Kara. I wouldn’t have been half as restrained,” Alex said. “Even Astra said that she would have killed her. And Astra’s her soulmate.”

 

Kara sat up straight, moving away from Alex.

 

“Rao. _Rao._ Astra is alive. My aunt is alive, Alex,” Kara said, her hands over her face. Her whole, beautiful hands.

 

“She is. She’s kind of amazing, actually. I’ve been working with her for a while. She has been looking for you. She let Cadmus take her, you know, so she could get you out. She could have died.”

 

“Wow,” Kara said, sagging a little. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe she’s alive.”

 

Alex stepped forward, a little closer, and Kara leaned forward again, her face against Alex’s shoulder.

 

“I can’t – I don’t have enough energy, or something, just yet. To meet her. Is that okay?” she asked, looking up at Alex pleadingly.

 

Alex stroked her face carefully.

 

“Of course it’s okay, Kara. She’s gone already. She just stayed with mom to make sure you woke, and now she’s gone. We’re alone. It’s just us.”

 

Kara looked up at her and Alex’s heart contracted almost painfully. She’d missed Kara’s eyes so much. The dark blue, the way they looked like they had little galaxies swirling around in them.

 

“She took so much from us, Alex,” Kara said, and she sounded broken. Alex’s heart gave another lurch.

 

“I know, Kara. But I’m here, and you’re here, and we’re safe now. And, as it turns out, we’re soulmates,” she said, holding her arm out with a smile. She noted that the tattoo was changing, filling out with colours and deepening, somehow. It was amazing. She stared at it for a moment, and then Kara lifted her arm. It was plain, the writing, her name in italics.

 

_Alexandra Danvers_

Seeing it now still made her heart lurch, though. Because it was changing, too, and there were darker colours running around it, in line with Alex’s personality, she supposed. But it was proof, if proof had ever been needed, that they were meant for each other. Zatanna Zatara, wherever she was, had started this soulmark business, but somewhere along the line someone (or something) else had strengthened her spell to make it apply to everyone, apparently even aliens from worlds light years away.

 

“I need to just check your internal organs, Stargirl,” Alex said, and Kara nodded. Alex pulled the sonogram machine from the corner and checked Kara’s insides carefully. Alex was the foremost expert on earth when it came to Kryptonian biology – Astra had been generous with her time, allowing Alex to take multiple scans over the time they’d worked together. Everything was in the right place, and completely healthy. There were some organs that Alex still hadn’t been able to discern the function of, and she thought maybe Kara might be able to help with that, since she’d been on track to be the youngest member of the Kryptonian science council before the destruction of the planet. Astra had no such interest, being a soldier.

 

Alex looked up from the machine’s screen to see Kara looking tense and upset, and realised that subjecting her to tests right now, after she had been held for years by Cadmus, was not the best idea. She cursed herself quietly before pushing the machine away, wiping the gel from Kara’s abdomen and stroking her hair carefully.

 

“Come home with me?” Alex breathed, and Kara nodded dumbly. Alex gave her some DEO-issue clothing before requisitioning a car and driver to take them back to Alex’s apartment. They stepped through the door and Kara walked around, looking at the sparse décor and shaking her head.

 

“This is all gonna have to change,” she said, sounding exhausted.

 

Alex was suddenly a mixture of gleeful and nervous. Kara was here, in her apartment. Kara was talking about changing the décor. Because Kara was _staying._

 

“Do you want to take a shower?” Alex asked, quietly, and Kara turned to her, a small smile on her face.

 

“Yeah. Do you mind?”

 

“Not at all. You go shower – I’ll leave you some comfortable clothes – and I’ll get some food delivered,” Alex said. Kara’s eyes lit up.

 

“Can we have potstickers?” she asked, eyes wide.

 

“You think I’m an amateur at this, Kara Zor-El?” Alex asked archly, hand on her hip.

 

“Sorry to have doubted you,” Kara said, a small smile on her face.

 

“Go get clean, Stargirl,” Alex said, and Kara blushed prettily before heading off to the bathroom.

 

Alex ordered most of the menu from her go-to Chinese restaurant, and then, after remembering Kara’s appetite (and Astra’s when she returned from a mission) she also ordered two pizzas. Kara would eat the leftovers, she knew, especially after the healing her body had just been through.

 

Alex cleaned up a little, leaving some soft fluffy pyjamas and socks for Kara to get dressed in, hoping it would make her feel at home. They had been apart for so long, and had so much to catch up on. It was crazy, really. And knowing that they were soulmates, that Kara was finally here, somehow had Alex more nervous than if it was a complete stranger in her apartment.

 

The food arrived as Kara came out of the bathroom, her hair wet and a towel wrapped around her shoulders. She looked beautiful. Just natural, no makeup, no elaborate hairdo. Just her. Alex stood staring before realising that the delivery people were still knocking at the door. She went to grab the food, tipping both of the guys handsomely – just because her soulmate was alive – and she turned back to find Kara almost next to her.

 

“You got pizza? And potstickers?” she asked, clapping her hands together in glee.

 

Something in Alex soared, then, watching Kara’s unfettered joy at something as simple as food. She was just so fucking beautiful, and nothing and no-one on this earth or beyond it had ever, ever compared.

 

“I love you,” Alex said, involuntarily, and Kara blushed deeply, her eyes wide and surprised.

 

“I love you too, Alex,” she said, before leaning forward and brushing a kiss against Alex’s cheek. She took the pizzas from Alex and went to sit on the couch. Alex smiled and went to grab some plates and napkins for the Chinese food.

 

They ate and talked about their favourite television shows – they had always watched copious amounts of television together, getting hooked on various shows while growing up. Alex was amazed to find out that Kara had never seen Crazy Ex-Girlfriend before, and put it on right away. Kara loved musicals; it was one of the first things she had realised when she landed. They’d watched Aladdin and The Lion King and The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast until they wore out the VHS tapes and had to replace them with DVDs. Alex had carefully saved up to buy them – it had been hard enough persuading Eliza to leave her enough money for food, never mind asking for luxuries like DVDs for Kara. Alex’s jaw tightened as she thought about her mother, what she had cost them already.

 

“Hey, Alex. Why are you frowning?”

 

Kara was close to her, looking at her in concern. Alex shook her head, smiling.

 

“Nothing, Stargirl.”

 

“Stop. You’re lying to me. What is it?” Kara asked, deploying a low-level pout.

 

“Okay. I was just thinking about Eliza. About how I used to save up my money from mowing the neighbour’s lawns to buy you those Disney DVDs, because she was too much of a shitty mother to do anything for you or for me. And then I got to thinking about what she did to us. I just… she stole so much from us. But I didn’t want to think about this tonight, Kara. I haven’t seen you since I was eighteen years old. I want to know everything. Please.”

 

Alex used her own pout then, a seldom-employed weapon in her own arsenal, and Kara melted immediately.

 

“Of course,” she said, her hand curling around Alex’s biceps, pulling Alex closer to her.

 

They talked late into the night. Alex told Kara about her meltdown at Stanford, and Kara told Alex about how she’d managed to track her that far before completely losing her trail. Alex told her about her recruitment to the DEO, about almost dying in a plane crash on her way to Geneva, about Astra saving her. Kara told her about the years she’d spent studying and the short time she’d spent working for Cat Grant before being taken by Cadmus. They talked about what had happened to Jeremiah, and Kara cried for almost thirty minutes because she’d been the cause of his abduction, albeit completely unwittingly. Alex comforted her and they ended up tangled together, Kara’s face pressed into Alex’s shoulder, with Alex’s arms tight around her. The couch was wide enough for that sort of snuggling, something that Alex had never noticed before, given that she was the only one who ever used it apart from Astra on her visits and the few times she’d stayed over. Kara was warm and her hair smelled like coconut from Alex’s shampoo. Alex lay there with her nose pressed to Kara’s hair, letting the scent take her back to when they were just realising who they were to each other, who they were going to be. They had never spoken of it in any sort of explicit way, other than that last night before Eliza had thrown Alex out, but they both knew that when they were ready, they would be together. Until Eliza had torn them apart.

 

Alex had the sense that there was some stuff that Kara wasn’t telling her about the time when they’d been apart, especially those first few years when she’d believed Alex was dead. But she figured they could talk about that in time. Barring accidents or illness, they could be together for 30 or 40 years. Alex had no idea how long Kara would live, could live, under a yellow sun, but she was pretty sure it was going to be a lot longer than her human lifespan. And Eliza had taken ten of those years away. She sighed, and Kara nuzzled into her neck.

 

“I can hear you thinking,” she said, quietly, and Alex shrugged.

 

“I can’t help it. I’m sorry. I know this should be a joyous occasion, but everything that happened – it’s not what it should be. What my mother took from me? From you? It’s just…”

 

Alex trailed off, lost for words.

 

“I know,” Kara said quietly, her breath warm against Alex’s neck.

 

“I’m sorry, Kara. I don’t mean to be a downer. I mean, I should be concentrating on the fact that you’re here, that you’re really here and you’re healed and you’re so beautiful, like so much more beautiful than I ever would have thought,” Alex said, without thinking, and Kara turned her head a little to look at her.

 

“You think I’m beautiful?” Kara asked, and her voice was a little breathy and Alex was suddenly mesmerised by her closeness. Had her eyes always been that blue? Her hair was so soft, and she smelled like coconuts and everything beautiful. Alex was probably staring. She was definitely staring.

 

“I think you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I think you might be the most beautiful thing _anyone’s_ ever seen,” Alex blurted.

 

Kara’s face reddened again, and her eyes were wide and bright. Her eyes flickered between Alex’s eyes and her lips, and she moved closer, close enough that her breath was tickling at Alex’s lips. Alex was trembling, and Kara rubbed at her upper arms gently for a moment.

 

“Is this okay?” she murmured, kissing Alex’s cheek, first, and then the corner of her lip.

 

Alex nodded enthusiastically, and Kara smiled. Then she stilled and moved forward, and finally, _finally_ , her lips were on Alex’s. They were soft and warm, like Kara, sweet and a little dry. Alex forgot how to breathe. Kara began to suck a little on her bottom lip, and Alex opened her mouth just wide enough for Kara to slip her tongue inside, delving and circling hers, and then Alex was _gone._ She pulled Kara hard against her, swallowing her tiny squeak of surprise, kissing Kara hungrily, something rising up in her like a tide. It was like breathing and drowning at once, and Kara’s hands made their way into Alex’s hair. She pulled a little, and Alex liked it. A lot. She growled or maybe it was a moan? Kara moved away then, and Alex was left, bereft and blinking.

 

“That was… wow. I never felt anything like that before,” Kara said, after a moment, breathing in little gasps.

 

“Me either,” Alex agreed, her chest heaving. She knew she was flushed without looking in the mirror; she felt like her face was on fire. She felt like _she_ was on fire. “God, I love you, Kara.” She stared, helpless in complete adoration as Kara smiled again, that wide smile that was utterly open and was just for Alex.

 

“I love you so much, Alex Danvers,” Kara said, her eyes half-lidded and her smile soft. It was like coming home, seeing that smile, and Alex was sure that she had never been so happy before in her whole life. She wanted to live in this moment forever, looking into Kara’s bright eyes, with the taste of Kara’s lips on her tongue. She sent out a silent prayer of thanks to Zatanna Zatara and to whomever had interfered with her spell all those years ago to create the soulmate bond. Alex Danvers would be forever grateful for that spell and its unexpected results.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara and Alex finally get some time to be together. Astra and Eliza visit, and an incident makes our girls realise that just because Kara is physically healed doesn't mean she's okay.

* * *

 

It was the following morning and Kara woke with a start. She was in a bed, under sweet-smelling, soft covers. She wasn’t in a cage, wasn’t being experimented on. Wasn’t being weakened by Kryptonite. She could hear the world around her again and it was jarring. She’d been at Cadmus for almost two years, and while she had spent most of that time safe, with only minor procedures being performed on her, she couldn’t help but remember the way it had all ended.

 

_“This is going to be painful, dear. Do try not to scream too loudly. No one cares, of course, but it will irritate the guards,” Lillian said, a mask over her face and a scalpel in her hand, the blade glinting green in the dazzling overhead lights. She cut into Kara’s abdomen and Kara distinctly felt the woman push apart the muscle layer to get to the organs underneath. She tried not to scream but the pain was so intense that she couldn’t stop the noise from escaping. When Lillian wrenched out the first organ, the Kryptonian version of a spleen, some part of Kara noted distantly, Kara felt pain like nothing else she had ever experienced. She felt her body begin to go into shock, and she let it, hoping that unconsciousness would pull her under quickly and mercifully. It did not. It took two more organs before her Kryptonian strength entirely deserted her and she passed out, Alex’s name on her lips._

“Kara! Wake up, Kara. You’re dreaming. You’re safe, honey. You’re safe with me. It’s Alex. I’m here, Stargirl. I’m here.”

 

The soft, desperate words penetrated the terrified haze that had overtaken her brain, and Kara came back to reality. She heard screaming and, when Alex touched her face hesitantly, she realised it was coming from her own mouth.

 

“It’s okay, Kara. You’re home. You’re home, Stargirl,” Alex murmured, wrapping Kara up in her arms, and Kara felt her body relax. She was safe. This was Alex, the one and only person who’d ever made her feel at home on this Rao-forsaken planet.

 

“I’m sorry, Alex. I woke up and I was thinking about it and then I just… went there, in my head,” Kara said.

 

“It’s okay, honey. It’s going to take some time. You were there for a long time. Recovery isn’t instant,” Alex said. Kara sobbed in her arms, letting some of the horrible tension and pain go from her body. Alex kissed her forehead and her temples until she’d cried herself out.

 

“Come on, Stargirl. Let’s see what I have in the kitchen for a hungry alien,” Alex said. Kara opened her eyes and smiled at Alex, who was looking at her with such fondness that it made her heart lurch in her chest. Then she looked around and saw that half of the bedroom wall was missing. Blasted apart by her heat vision, she could only assume.

 

“I’m so sorry, Alex,” she said, tears beginning to fall again. She stood, walking over to the damaged section, patting at a small part that was aflame until it was extinguished. “I can’t believe I did this. I wasn’t even asleep, Alex.”

 

“It’s okay, Kara. None of this is your fault, okay?” Alex said, turning Kara’s face to look at her. “They did this to you. You could burn this whole city to the ground and it still wouldn’t be your fault. We’ll fix this, Kara. We’ll get you some help to get through this. But don’t you dare blame yourself, Kara Danvers. You’re the victim here.”

 

Kara stared at her feet. She had been back in Alex’s life for five minutes and practically demolished her apartment.

 

“I’m so glad you’re here, Kara,” Alex said, putting her arms around Kara’s neck from behind and kissing the back of her neck. Somehow she knew just the right words to say right then, and Kara relaxed.

 

“Come on, Stargirl. Pancakes await!” Alex said, grandly, sweeping a huge, ridiculous bow that made Kara giggle.

 

Alex made some chocolate chip pancakes, the top one with a smiley face in it, and even though Kara wasn’t that scared kid that she had been when she met Alex, it still made her smile and feel warm inside. Like someone cared.

 

She ate a sizeable stack of the pancakes along with a huge cup of creamy, sugary coffee, and then showered. She hadn’t showered in two years – unless you counted getting hosed down by the guards – and it was a luxury that she wouldn’t take for granted for a long time, if ever. The heat of the water on her skin was wonderful.

 

After she and Alex had showered, they went for a walk in National City park. Kara took Alex’s hand, taking deep breaths and enjoying the freedom to move around and feel the sun on her skin. After a while, they sat on a bench, still and serene.

 

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Alex said, quietly, as she traced patterns across Kara’s knuckles with her thumb.

 

“Neither can I. I thought I was going to be there forever. And that last couple of days – I was sure I was going to die in there. Lillian was… I’ve never seen anyone like that, someone who hated me just because I wasn’t born on this planet,” Kara shivered. She looked up to see Alex’s eyes fill with tears.

 

“Hey, don’t cry. It’s okay. We’re here now. We’re alive,” Kara said, forcing a smile. She was genuinely happy – she was. But she didn’t feel like she was free just yet. Her mind and heart hadn’t quite caught up with her body.

 

“I’m sorry. I just… I think part of me had given up on this. On ever seeing you again,” Alex said, rubbing her thumb over Kara’s palm.  

 

“It’s okay, Alex. I had too. When I was trying to find you at Stanford, when I realised you’d disappeared – that lots of students had just been erased – I thought I’d never find you. And Cadmus almost caught me that night when they caught Jeremiah. I was too frightened to fly anywhere after that,” Kara said, taking a deep breath as she thought about the kryptonite darts they’d used on her. About the kryptonite that Eliza had used when she abducted Kara and told her that Alex was dead. She really, really hated kryptonite.

 

“The DEO recruits from Stanford a lot. And Harvard. They pick up the ones like me, who are falling behind or flunking out or sometimes when they can’t afford to keep studying. They picked me up and helped me make something of myself. I am so lucky that J’onn found me,” Alex said.

 

“Yeah, it sounds like it. I mean, I sort of wish he hadn’t because then maybe I would have found you, before all of this? But I guess things happen for a reason,” Kara said, shrugging.

 

“I guess. But I wish that you hadn’t had to go through all of this,” Alex said, sighing.

 

Kara put her head on Alex’s shoulder and Alex automatically put her arm around Kara’s waist, pulling her close. They sat there in comfortable silence until Kara’s stomach groaned.

 

“Pizza? Chinese? Thai? Italian?” Alex asked, teasingly.

 

Tears filled Kara’s eyes, suddenly. She’d been just about making it through because of the high-protein bars that Jeremiah had sneaked to her. Now she could eat anything she wanted, anytime she wanted. She really was free.

 

“Now I know there’s something badly wrong. You cry at food now? That’s not my Stargirl. You used to threaten to melt my face if I touched your potstickers,” Alex teased, and Kara smiled, despite her tears.

 

“I want everything. All of the above,” Kara said, and Alex smiled.

 

“Come on then, Zor-El. Let’s feed that Kryptonian monster you carry around in that belly,” Alex said, stroking said belly lightly and making Kara’s skin tingle.

 

Kara felt something like contentment wash over her for a moment. Things weren’t okay. They wouldn’t be okay for a long time. But it was something. She could go outside, she could eat whatever she wanted, and no-one was hurting her. And Alex was by her side. She felt strong and healthy and her soulmate was holding her hand. She took a deep breath, letting the sunshine sink into her skin, and allowed Alex to pull her along by the hand to the nearest restaurant.

 

***

 

It wasn’t what Alex had imagined. Kara wasn’t the sunny, sweet, happy young woman she had been. Of course she was ten years older, and ten years had changed Alex in huge ways too. But it was those last two years that had changed Kara the most. Fear, pain, grief – they had all taken their toll on Kara. It had worn away at that sweet nature of hers, at her belief that people were inherently good. It had taken away some of her hope and joy, and watching Kara flinch and watch every person who passed with wide, frightened eyes was heart-breaking to Alex.

  
They were eating at an all you can eat buffet-style restaurant and Kara was cleaning them out methodically, going from section to section and filling plate after plate with different types of cuisine. She had been missing out on all of her favourites for so long that Alex didn’t have the heart to deny her anything. The staff in the restaurant watched in awe as the skinny blonde girl filled her plates (multiple) with enough food to feed a football team. And then she demolished it. Alex watched fondly as Kara ate every kind of food imaginable, stuffing her face and smiling and humming the whole time. This was the Kara she remembered.

 

“So, Stargirl. Now that you’ve frightened all of the restaurant staff, I think it’s time for us to catch up on all of the television and movies you missed,” Alex said, smiling.

 

“Yes! So much yes!” Kara said, her smile somewhat manic. Alex chuckled.

 

“Now, I have some bad news about Hodor,” Alex said.

 

“No! Not Hodor!” Kara said, her mouth comically wide.

 

Despite Hodor’s untimely demise, their evening passed extremely pleasantly. They cuddled up together under a blanket, Kara’s head on Alex’s shoulder, and they watched episodes of a number of shows before Kara turned to look at Alex.

 

“Thank you for today,” she said, smiling. “You made me forget.”

 

“Anytime, Stargirl,” Alex said. “I have been waiting you for so long, Kara. I just want us to be happy.”

 

“Me too,” Kara said, nodding. “I want that so much.”

 

She was suddenly very close, her glasses long since discarded, and her eyes were an intense blue as she looked up at Alex.

 

“Can I?” she asked, and Alex, suddenly breathless, nodded. Kara moved closer still, her eyes closing, and her lips touched Alex’s so softly that she was half-convinced that they hadn’t actually touched at all. But then Kara turned her body a little, one hand coming up to cup Alex’s face, and she kissed her more firmly, her lips warm and a little dry. Alex’s hand came up to tangle in Kara’s hair and she pulled Kara closer, their position a little awkward. Kara solved it by swinging her leg over Alex’s lap, straddling her.

 

“Is this okay?” she murmured, her voice low and a little gravelly.

 

“Yes,” Alex replied, her mind short-circuiting a little as she realised how okay it really was, having Kara looking down at her like this, her blonde hair like a curtain between them and the world. Kara leaned forward, kissing Alex again, first softly, and then not. Her hand moved to Alex’s hair and she pulled it gently. It made Alex gasp into Kara’s mouth, and Kara’s tongue was in her mouth, then. Alex’s brain said ‘oh,’ and she reciprocated, tasting Kara’s mouth and tongue, playing with it, and then they were both starting to gasp into each other’s mouths. It was too much, suddenly, and Alex had to take a moment.

 

“Jesus, Kara,” Alex said, pulling herself away with difficulty. “I haven’t… have you ever felt like this before?” she asked, eyes wide and chest heaving.

 

“No,” Kara said, resting her forehead against Alex’s. “I think… I’m pretty sure that this is what it’s supposed to feel like, when you get to be with the right person.”

 

“Yeah?” Alex said, moving a little so that she could focus on Kara’s eyes.

 

“Yeah,” Kara smiled softly. “I love you, zrhueiao,” she whispered, her eyes dark and somehow sparkling at the same time.

 

“And I love you, Kara Zor-El,” Alex breathed, looking at Kara in amazement. Yes, they had taken ten years to get here, but god if she didn’t feel like it was worth it right now. Kara felt amazing in her lap, her body soft and relaxed against Alex’s. “Never leave me?”

 

“Never, while I have a choice,” Kara said fervently.

 

The following day, after some negotiation and a long telephone call between Alex and Astra, they had lunch with Astra and Eliza. Kara wanted to see her aunt, who she had believed dead for so many years. Alex understood perfectly.

 

“You sure you don’t mind, Alex? I know that this time we have is for us, to get to know each other…” Kara said.

 

Alex held up a hand.

 

“Kara. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, but how long has it been since you set eyes on Astra? I understand. When Astra found Dad, I never wanted to let him out of my sight. I mean, I had to, because everything was happening so fast. But I didn’t want to. It’s okay. We’ll see Astra and then we’ll have the rest of the day to ourselves, okay?” Alex said, smiling.

 

“Thank you,” Kara said gratefully, her eyes filling.

 

Lunch started out super-awkward. It was to be expected, Alex knew, because how could it not be? The magnitude of what Eliza had done to them hung over the table in Alex’s apartment like a cloud of toxic waste.

 

They ate something, Alex was sure. She certainly remembered a period of time when they were sitting at the extremely plain table that she’d bought at the insistence of J’onn and Astra, who wanted somewhere to sit to eat when they came by. She remembered drinking a _lot_ of wine. Eliza was watching her, the crinkle between her eyes betraying disapproval, but she said nothing. Which was probably a good thing; Alex wasn’t sure she could have kept her mouth shut if Eliza had dared to criticise her for anything at all.

 

Kara tried to break the silence, tried to make conversation flow. But there was just such an atmosphere that it almost made Alex shudder. When Astra suggested they go to sit in the living room, Alex breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe the change of venue would help.

 

It did, oddly. Kara sat with her feet draped over Alex’s lap, her hand entwined with Alex’s, and the soft movements of her legs and feet and her thumbs against Alex’s skin were soothing. Alex felt the tension loosen a little in her chest, and she was able to breathe a little more easily.

 

“So, Alex,” Eliza said hesitantly. “J’onn said you went to Stanford. What did you study?”

 

It was an olive branch, a chance to start a conversation, and Alex took it, despite not wanting to in the slightest. She explained what had happened at Stanford matter-of-factly, and noted that when Eliza blanched at what Alex had been through, Astra took her hand and rubbed at her palm soothingly. Their soul bond seemed to be a good one. Part of Alex was _furious_ at the idea of Eliza getting to be happy, especially with an alien and a _woman._ But the better part of her was delighted for Astra and cautiously happy for the woman she had once called ‘Mom’.

 

She talked about her studies after Stanford, her work at the DEO on xenobiology, and was shocked to see a look of fierce pride on Eliza’s face. When Eliza opened her mouth to say something, Alex’s eyes widened and she shook her head, a miniscule movement. Eliza somehow read her correctly, however, and she closed her mouth immediately. There was a long silence after that, which was broken by Astra. Alex chuckled internally when she realised that things were bad enough for Astra, the most socially-challenged person she’d ever met, to notice and to attempt to intervene.

 

“So, Little One. We have heard of the Brave One’s studies. What of yours?” Astra asked gently. “I believe you were on your way to becoming the youngest ever member of the Science Guild on Krypton,” she said, with a look of pride and admiration that Alex had never seen on her face before.

 

Kara blushed a little under the attention.

 

“I… I couldn’t carry on with science. When I got here, everything was so different. I mean, Rao. So much of what humans think they know is so wrong, Aunt Astra. And science - it reminded me so much of home. I decided to try something else. I was working at CatCo, before…” she trailed off for a moment, her eyes far away. “I have a degree in journalism, and I was intending to become a reporter, once I’d paid my dues as Cat Grant’s assistant. I’m sure she’s forgotten me, but that was my plan,” Kara said, her voice losing strength towards the end.

 

“I am proud of you, Kara Zor-El. I prayed to Rao that my sister would find a way to save you when Krypton died, and I wished so badly that I could be there for you, when I realised you were alive. You are so strong, to have gone through this alone and still be standing. I am so proud, Little One,” Astra said, and to Alex’s astonishment, she appeared to be crying. Alex was fairly sure she had never seen Astra’s composure crack in the least, certainly not like this.

 

“I wasn’t alone, Aunt Astra. I had Alex. She kept me grounded. She’s the only reason I ever felt like I belonged here,” Kara said, with an adoring look at Alex, before she threw herself across the room at Astra. Astra caught her and they both began to sob, wrapped together. Alex’s eyes filled and she decided to absent herself from the room for a moment to regain her composure. She began to make some tea, since Sheldon always said a hot beverage was compulsory when someone was upset. It gave her something to do with her hands, at least, and so she filled up the seldom-used kettle and set it to boil.

 

“I know that there are never going to be enough words in the world to make up for what I’ve done, what I’ve taken from you,” Eliza said from behind Alex, quietly. Alex turned to see her mother staring at her shoes. “I took ten years from you and Kara, and I hurt you both so badly that I can barely even understand how I could do it. How I could be so blind, how I could let my own pain turn me into that… monster, who would do those things. I am seeing a therapist; I’m trying to understand, to be better. Astra… she is really helping, already. She’s a wonderful person.”

 

Alex nodded automatically. Astra was a wonderful person, and Alex had come to care for her deeply. The woman had supported her for the last two years, let Alex cry on her shoulder, helped her to rescue Kara. Astra was amazing.

 

“I don’t expect you to be happy about me having therapy or to have any understanding of any of what I did. I don’t deserve that from you, Alex. But if you let me, I will spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you. I love you and Kara so much, and I will never stop, whether you want to see me again or not.”

 

Eliza seemed to run out of steam, then, and she leaned back on the wooden back of the chair behind her. Alex closed her eyes for a long moment before speaking.

 

“I… I don’t know what to say to that. I can’t say that I forgive you, or that I understand, because I don’t know if I ever will. But Astra is one of my closest friends, and Kara’s aunt, and I won’t do anything to keep them apart. So I think we’re going to be a part of one another’s lives, whether I like it or not. We’ll just have to see how it goes. But I don’t need anything from you, Eliza. You don’t need to atone. Try to be happy. Soul bonds are an amazing thing, and you should be concentrating on your soulmate, not me. Whatever comes will come,” Alex said, shrugging a little. Honestly the idea of Eliza trying to ingratiate herself into hers and Kara’s lives really made Alex feel a little ill. Better to let it go and move on. If they needed to talk about it, they’d talk.

 

Eliza flinched when Alex called her by name rather than calling her Mom. But she nodded, looking resigned and a little startled when Alex told her to concentrate on Astra and not atoning for her mistakes. Clearly she’d expected to be turned away or berated. She moved to Alex’s side and, mercifully did not try to touch her daughter, but rather started to assemble mugs and tea-related paraphernalia. They made four cups of soothing, honey-sweetened tea between them, carrying them in and passing them to Kara and Astra, who were now sitting on the smaller couch, Kara’s head on Astra’s shoulder. Astra was stroking Kara’s hair and kissing the crown of her head, tears pouring down her face and Kara’s. For a moment Alex imagined she was seeing Alura there, the woman’s spirit shining through her twin. The thought made Alex’s eyes fill. Kara had been through so much. How much more could she take?

 

Eliza sat next to Alex gingerly, making sure that Alex was comfortable with her proximity, and they sat in a more comfortable silence for a long time; Alex wasn’t entirely sure how long. They eventually shifted when the light started to fade. Kara’s belly grumbled and Alex snorted with laughter, followed by Astra and a sheepish Eliza.

 

“Trust a Kryptonian’s stomach to break up the party,” Alex said, smiling, and Kara smiled back at her. “You ready for some food, Stargirl?”

 

Kara nodded, still wrapped in her aunt’s arms. Alex made a half-hearted attempt to invite Eliza and Astra to join them for dinner, but they decided to go instead, making promises to come by again soon. Alex nodded. She was fine with that; she knew Kara needed her aunt.

 

When she closed the door behind them, Alex sighed in relief. It was strange enough having Kara here in what had been Alex’s private space, but to have her mother and Astra here too? That was much too much.

 

“Hey, Stargirl,” she said, dropping into the seat next to Kara. She pulled Kara into her arms. “You okay, there?”

 

“Mmm,” Kara said, relaxing into her arms. “Better.”

 

“You glad you saw Astra?” Alex asked. Kara nodded, looking at Alex, here wide eyes showing how much joy she felt at seeing her aunt. Alex smiled. At least this reunion was a good thing for Kara and Astra.

 

“What about you? How do you feel about seeing Eliza?” Kara asked, her voice a little gravelly from crying.

 

“I… I’ll let you know, when I work it out,” Alex said, taking a deep breath. “She was fine. She apologised, says she wants to make it up to us. I told her to just live her life, and we’d see how things go. I would never want to keep you and Astra apart. I can deal with seeing Eliza if you can.”

 

Kara looked at her for a long moment before nodding.

 

“I can. And you’re right. She needs to live, not dwell in the past. Not that I forgive her. But maybe some day,” Kara said. Since that was more than Alex could imagine, she just nodded for now, too.

 

They ate together, watching Netflix and eating takeout while cuddled under a blanket. Sure, the takeout went everywhere, because Kara was a messy eater (and Alex absolutely did not blush when that thought crossed her mind) but this was exactly what Alex had pictured over the years when they were separated. She’d thought about kissing and sex and dates and all that good stuff, too, but the scene she kept picturing was this – her and Kara, feet entwined under a comfortable blanket while they ate too much takeout, watching whatever television or film they had cued up on Netflix (or whatever new way people were watching television when they finally reunited).

 

“I love you,” Alex murmured, around a mouthful of orange chicken.

 

Kara looked at her quizzically.

 

“I love you too,” she said, her cheeks full of potstickers. Her ridiculous face made Alex smile wider than she could remember doing for years. She was filled with a wild joy and she blinked back tears, turning back to the television. She felt Kara’s hand seek hers out and squeeze, and she shot her a sidelong glance to see Kara smiling at her slyly. She could never hide anything from Kara. She smiled back and turned back once again to the television, trying to concentrate on whatever was happening on this episode of Homeland. Some half-naked chick who wanted to be part of a Sheikh’s harem, she thought vaguely, but her attention was on Kara’s hand in her own, and the pulsing, golden feeling in her chest.

 

 

***

 

Kara was happy. So, so happy. She was with Alex. She had woken up for the past few mornings with Alex wrapped around her. She had eaten more than her body weight in takeout food over the last few days. She wasn’t starving anymore. She was free, and with the person she loved more than any other, on this planet or the other 12 she’d visited. She was safe, because Cadmus was gone.

 

So why was she so frightened? For the last three nights, she’d been awake for practically the whole night. She’d cuddle up with Alex, then she’d wake up, her body trembling and her heart beating so fast it was almost thrumming. She managed to get some sleep later, focusing on Alex’s heartbeat like she’d done when she was a teenager, and woke up with Alex cuddling her and kissing her hair. It should have been perfect, but she was so _terrified_.

 

It came to a head two days after Astra and Eliza visited. They were out in the park and a group of guys yelled at them for holding hands, yelling out ridiculous things about how one night with one of those dudebros would ‘cure’ them, and other such offensive crap. Alex just rolled her eyes, walking along and smiling at Kara when her grip tightened.

 

“It’s okay, Stargirl. They’re just assholes. Don’t worry,” Alex said, and it was almost okay. It almost blew over. But then one of the guys followed them and grabbed Alex’s arm. Kara saw red, literally. Before she knew it, she was hovering above the ground with Alex in her arms, and her heat vision was burning into the guy’s arm. He stumbled backwards, falling on his ass, holding his arm and looking up at her in fear. The look of fear was what snapped Kara out of it. She never wanted to frighten anyone. She just wanted to be left alone.

 

“Rao, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Alex,” Kara said, landing them both on the ground before sinking to her knees. She had used her heat vision on a civilian. They were going to take her back and put her in a cell and she _deserved_ it, she did. She wept into her hands, barely aware of Alex making a quiet phone call before wrapping Kara up in her arms.

 

“It’s okay, Kara. I’m safe. You’re safe. He was just an asshole. It’s okay. J’onn’s coming, he’s going to help,” Alex murmured. Kara just nodded. She didn’t know what else to say. She was going back to a cell and they were never going to let her out, not now. And she didn’t even blame them. It was a shame Lillian Luthor hadn’t managed to kill her; it would have been better for Alex never to have seen her like this, for Alex to find Kara dead at Cadmus instead of seeing her like this, out of control and dangerous. Kara’s thoughts continued to spiral and she wept more and more quietly, sinking back into her mind, to the safe, quiet place in her mind where she had lived while she was alone in her cell at Cadmus. Tegaren had probably saved her from going insane. Who would save her now?

 

“Come on, Kara. Time to go home, honey,” Alex said soothingly. Kara almost laughed. Home. Is that what they were calling it now, a tiny cell filled with Kryptonite? Home? She just nodded in acquiescence. Alex led her to a black military van with blacked-out windows and government plates. She took a last deep breath, savouring the fresh air, since it would be her last. She looked at the sun for a second before allowing Alex to pull her into the van and strap her into a chair.

 

She disappeared again, then, for a while, letting her mind go to where it had been safe. She eventually fell asleep and felt herself being carried by strong arms up a set of stairs. That was new; usually they kept her underground so there was no chance of her accidentally seeing the sun and getting her strength back. She just sighed, trembling, and the arms around her tightened a little, almost comforting. There was a noise of a door opening and then Kara was placed on a soft surface that smelled familiar. It smelled like Alex, and like Kara herself.

 

“Kara? Miss Danvers? You’re home now.  I’m J’onn, do you remember me?”

 

Kara opened her eyes. She had met J’onn briefly, or so she thought. But she didn’t really know why he would be talking to her now. Or why she was lying on the couch in Alex’s apartment.

 

“Hi,” she said, weakly.

 

“Hi,” J’onn J’onnz said, smiling at her. The smile looked a little odd on his face. “How are you feeling?”

 

“Tired,” Kara said, realising that using her heat vision had taken a lot more of her energy than she’d realised. “Is that guy… is he okay?”

 

“He’s fine,” J’onn said, dismissively. “No-one who saw what happened remembers, and his arm has been healed. There’s no trace of your actions. Now, I’m not excusing what you did, but you have recently been a victim of trauma and I see no reason why you should be punished for dealing with PTSD. What I do want, is for you to wear this when you’re outdoors, at least for a little while,” he continued, showing her a black box. He opened it to show a bracelet with a green stone in the middle. Kara could feel the radiation weakening her. She nodded. “And the other thing I would like you to do is to come into the DEO twice a week for therapy. You’re not alone anymore, Kara. Alex is my family, and that means you are, too. I will do whatever I can to keep you safe. That’s not to say that I want you to melt any more civilians, but we at the DEO understand that you have been dealing with trauma on an unprecedented scale. We want to help, Kara.”

 

Kara nodded, his words sinking in. He handed her the now-closed box with the Kryptonite bracelet inside, and Kara put it in her pocket without saying anything. She wasn’t being locked away. They wanted her to neutralise her powers when she was in public, but in the circumstances, that made sense.

 

“If you’re ever in trouble and you need the DEO to come to your aid, press the button on the back of the bracelet. It will switch off the synthetic Kryptonite effect too, so that you’re able to defend yourself if you need to,” J’onn said. Kara nodded.

 

“I’ll leave you to your soulmate. Alex, please bring Kara in tomorrow to meet her therapist?” he asked, looking at Alex over Kara’s shoulder. Kara hadn’t even realised that Alex was behind her.

 

“Of course,” Alex murmured.

 

Kara closed her eyes and when she opened them again, J’onn was gone. There was a cup of her favourite sweet tea on the coffee table in front of her, and Alex was sitting in the armchair nearby, reading.

 

“Hey sleephead. You okay?” Alex said, looking up as she heard Kara move.

 

“Fine,” Kara said, confused. She didn’t remember falling asleep.

 

“You sure? You gave me a scare, earlier,” Alex said. She put her book down, marking the page carefully with a bookmark, something which Kara had teased her for as a teenager. Surely remembering the page number wasn’t too much hard work, even for a human brain?

 

“I… I’m so sorry, Alex. I thought he was attacking you, and I acted on instinct. I’m so sorry if I scared you.”

 

“No, Kara. That’s not what scared me. When J’onn was here, you basically just passed out and I couldn’t get you to wake. J’onn says it’s because you used your heat vision. When Superman solar flares – loses his powers – it’s usually because he has used too much of his heat vision. So it makes sense, since you haven’t used your powers that much since you got to earth,” Alex said, a sympathetic smile on her face.

 

“But… I hurt someone, Alex. I could have killed him! I would have, I think!”

 

“Kara, you burned his arm a little. And you stopped. I didn’t stop you, you stopped yourself. So don’t start thinking you’re dangerous or whatever, because you’re not. You’re still my sunny Danvers, the Stargirl that I’ve been waiting my whole life for. I believe in you, and I trust you. For now, we have the bracelet, and you’ll have some therapy and we’ll see how things go, okay? I love you, Kara Zor-El,” Alex said, moving to sit on the floor next to Kara. She kissed Kara gently.

 

“Okay,” Kara said, quietly, her heart thumping. Alex still loved her, and she wasn’t in a cage. She didn’t understand it, but that’s what had happened. She was still safe. No-one was taking her away from Alex. Not yet, anyway. She breathed a sigh of relief and sat up a little, inviting Alex to cuddle with her for a while. They ordered some food and watched a movie, and Alex carried Kara to bed a little later when she couldn’t make it through the first hour of the movie without snoring. That night, Kara slept like a baby, safe in Alex’s arms.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some introspection and both of our girls find support in friends and family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for taking so long to update. I am having a few health issues at the minute and concentration isn't easy to come by.

* * *

 

The therapist was nice. She was an older woman who Kara reminded her of Eliza, but not in a bad way. Dr Vanessa Calder was softly-spoken, shrewd and compassionate. She had a history of dealing with soldiers with PTSD, whether it be through battle, torture or imprisonment. She had worked with Clark and with some of his cohorts in the Justice League, too. She was well-acquainted with the Luthors and their ilk and had told Kara on her first visit that she was there to help her heal, and that Kara could tell her anything. Kara had said nothing during that session. She’d sat staring at her hands, and after a while found herself thinking of Tegaren and how well he’d taken care of her and kept her spirits up, even though every time he’d left his cell he’d been tortured and experimented on. She knew that Alex had arranged for his boyfriend to be contacted and a funeral had been held while she was in her healing cocoon. She began to cry silently, and Dr Calder handed her a box of tissues and, a few minutes later, a hot cup of ginger tea. It cut through the lump in her throat and she felt better immediately.

 

“Thank you,” she managed, before getting up and leaving. Dr Calder nodded gravely.

 

The second session, she managed to talk about Tegaren. The sweet man who had done so much for her, despite not knowing her at all. He’d apparently recognised a vulnerable soul and taken it upon himself to protect her as much as possible. Kara choked on her own tears as she told Dr Calder stories about the Bolian, about his empathy and his jokes and the stories he told – stories that Kara wasn’t 100% sure were true, but that had made her laugh so hard she had almost lost bladder control on more than one occasion. Dr Calder laughed with her and later raised her own cup of tea to Tegaren’s memory. She also suggested that Kara go to see his boyfriend, to tell him the tales she had shared, because it would give him comfort. Kara nodded wordlessly, and when Alex came to pick her up later, she asked if they could find Ben’s address for when she was ready.

 

In between the therapy, Kara and Alex were getting to know one another again. Kara was pretty sure that Alex had noticed that Kara wasn’t exactly the puppy she had once been. But Alex was no longer the same woman Kara had once known, either. There was something harsh in her, something ready to strike out at any time, and Kara was pretty sure that the years they’d been apart were the main reason for that darkness. Alex was still everything that Kara loved, though, regardless of darkness. She was still Kara’s tether to the earth and Kara had no intention of going anywhere without Alex by her side. But there was a lot that she was holding on to; pain and anger and loss. Kara knew those feelings intimately but she wasn’t qualified to help Alex with them, so she tried to be as loving as she could, when she was present enough to be there for Alex. Eliza really had stolen such a lot from them. It made her so mad to think that Eliza had ruined ten years of two people’s lives, that she had caused all of this pain for both of them. It was sad, too, because Eliza had clearly not been in her right mind when she did what she did. But Kara had almost died on numerous occasions because of Eliza Danvers’ actions, and she was pretty sure that if Alex knew about her attempts to end her life, Alex’s temper would blow.

 

Kara decided to address the matter with Astra. Her aunt, though clearly almost broken by her time in Fort Rozz and the Phantom Zone, was a strong and stalwart friend to Alex, and Kara hoped that she would be able to advise her on addressing the matter with Alex when the time came. So she encouraged Alex to go to the DEO to spend some time with Jeremiah, who was still recuperating from his injuries, and Kara asked Astra to meet her. They met at a coffee shop called Noonan’s, not far from the DEO’s city base. It felt oddly… normal, to meet her super-powered aunt, National city’s hero, in a coffee shop. But it was nice to be innocuous and anonymous, surrounded by humans and bustle instead of isolated and watched 24 hours a day.

 

“So, Little One. How are you finding life with your beloved?” Astra asked, watching Kara carefully. She drank some of the scalding black liquid too fast, and a man on the next table stared a little. Astra looked at him before giving a poor attempt at a cough, touching her throat and wincing. Kara tried not to snort. Astra was really not good at passing for human.

 

“Alex is… she’s wonderful, Aunt Astra,” Kara said, her eyes on her coffee. She stared at the tiny bubbles of the latte, her mind far away. She was drawn from her mind by a warm hand on her own. She looked up to meet Astra’s concerned gaze. “I’m sorry, Aunt Astra. I find it hard to… staying present, it’s difficult. I’m still not really convinced that I’m not still in there,” Kara confessed.

 

“You need not worry, Little One. I snapped the Luthor woman’s neck myself. She will be harming no-one else,” Astra said, stroking Kara’s knuckles with her thumb.

 

“I know. I just… I don’t feel it, not all the time. Sometimes I look around me and I expect to see the glass walls and the Kryptonite,” she said, ensuring her voice was too low to be overheard by anyone but her aunt.

 

“It will take time, Little One. You remember Torquasm-Rao?” Astra asked.

 

“I do,” Kara confirmed.

 

“I have found much peace in it, myself. Perhaps we could practise together?” Astra suggested. Kara nodded. It would be nice to have something that reminded her of her home, her beginnings.

 

“I wanted to ask your advice,” Kara said, after a peaceful silence. Astra was still holding her free hand. It was comforting and grounding, both, and she was so grateful in that moment that she sent a prayer to Rao, a prayer of praise and thanks, for allowing her to have this one part of Krypton, her aunt who she loved so deeply.

 

“Anything,” Astra said simply.

 

“It’s about Alex. Well, not really Alex, I suppose,” Kara began.

 

“You wish to know how to please your lover? I can teach you all of those things I have picked up on my travels, Little One, but there is no technique that can rival the sheer passion that comes with a true bond,” Astra said earnestly. Kara blushed fiercely.

 

“No, it’s… it’s not that, Astra. We haven’t – we’re not at that stage, not yet. But I…” She took a deep breath and waited for her blush to abate somewhat. “There are things she doesn’t know, about the time after Eliza told me that Alex was dead.”

 

Astra’s face darkened.

 

“My mate has caused you both much pain,” she said, her mouth tight.

 

“Yes. But it’s in the past,” Kara said, waving her hand dismissively.

 

“Perhaps. But she is responsible. She has a debt,” Astra said, in the way that Kara’s mother, Alura, had once passed judgement. Firmly, her chin jutting out. Kara wasn’t sure what Astra meant, but she just nodded.

 

“When I thought Alex was gone, I lost my mind a little. I was young. Not even 17 yet, and I thought my life was over again, for the second time. I… I tried to hurt myself. I…” she began crying silently.

 

“Let us continue this at your home,” Astra decided, standing. Kara followed her blindly, confused when she looked around to find them in an alley. “We can fly, if you allow me to carry you,” she explained. “The people are used to seeing their woman in black flying around the city.” She changed into her bodysuit in the blink of an eye, her mask on, hair tied back.

 

Kara nodded, and Astra put her arms around Kara, generating enough thrust to get them both off the ground. Kara was in no state to fly, so she just snuggled into her aunt’s arms, allowing herself to be held.

 

In a few moments they were landing inside Alex and Kara’s apartment. It was still empty. Alex wasn’t due home for a while. Astra made them some more coffee and found a cheesecake in the fridge, bringing it out with two spoons. They made short work of the cake, and then Kara told Astra everything. The suicide attempts, her soulmark appearing, breaking Eliza’s wrist, the Kryptonite. Cadmus, Jeremiah. Astra held her and stroked her hair as she cried, and Kara let herself be comforted, let Astra take all the pain and deal with it for a while. By the time she was done she had a headache, but she felt lighter. Astra had been silent for a long time, and Kara looked up at her aunt’s face, wondering what she was thinking. Astra looked down at her fondly. Kara’s head was in her lap, and she was snuggled into Astra’s belly as Astra stroked her hair.

 

“You wish to know how to raise these… attempts, with Alexandra?” she asked.

 

“Yes. I don’t want her to blame Eliza, but I also… I think she needs to know. She needs to know because I wasn’t strong enough to be without her, Astra. I don’t think it’s fair that she is… stuck, with me. Because of these marks. She deserves someone strong. Someone who deserves her,” Kara said, and even to herself she sounded lost and defeated.

 

“Kara. You are the strongest person I have ever known. I came here with my husband. With other adults. We had time to assess our environment and work together. The soulmarks came as a surprise, but we were not children. We had the tools to cope, though it was not easy. You were a child who had just lost her parents, her whole family. Her whole _world_. And once you found some stability on this new planet, it was violently taken from you. It is no surprise to me that you would have been so lost and so very hurt as to try to end your own life. It was not weakness, it was despair, against which we are all powerless. Please, speak to your physician, Dr Calder. Let her help you with this pain. But never, never think you are weak, Kara Zor-El,” Astra said, her eyes intense.

 

Kara nodded, thinking hard about Astra’s words. She fell asleep a little while later, and was barely aware of Astra lifting her and carrying her to her bed where she felt Alex wrap around her, warm and smelling the way she did now, with gun-oil and chemicals beneath the sweetness of her body wash and shampoo. It was soothing, and she let herself sleep, knowing that their contact was healing them both, bit by bit.

 

***

 

Alex spent the afternoon with her father, talking about her discoveries in xenobiology and advances in the sciences in general, along with general matters like how his family were – they had been stunned when they received the call to say that Jeremiah was actually alive, and Teri and the kids were in a hotel nearby, spending as much time with Jeremiah as they could while he recuperated. Alex also took some time to see Lena Luthor and Ale’ara, who were getting prepared to move out of the DEO and into a home of their own – a home that would be protected by the DEO for the foreseeable future, because no-one was under any illusions that the end of Cadmus meant the end of anti-alien sentiment.

 

“How are you, Agent Danvers?” Lena asked, in her soft voice. Ale’ara was nearby, talking to a young alien who’d been held by Cadmus for years, trying to get her to (literally) come out of her shell and join the rest of the refugees that the DEO was currently looking after.

 

Alex sat on the edge of the bed, the only other free surface in the tiny room the DEO had assigned to Lena.

 

“I’m okay, I guess?” Alex asked. “And please, call me Alex. You did before.”

 

Lena nodded once, her lips drawn up in a wry smile.

 

“Your soulmate is hurting,” she said, from nowhere.

 

“How do you know? Is it your powers? Is she in danger?” Alex asked, ready to jump up and find Kara immediately.

 

“Relax, Alex. I heard on the grapevine that she had a bit of a meltdown and hurt some civilians. J’onn has been taking care of it, smoothing things over. But she’s not okay, is she?” Lena asked, her ice-green eyes intent on Alex’s.

 

“No. I guess, in retrospect, it was stupid to think she could be. I mean, after everything? She lost her whole world, then she lost me, and then she was kidnapped by Cadmus and god only knows what happened to her there! I don’t know how to help her,” Alex said, staring at her hands.

 

“She is deeply hurt. Some of it comes from her time from Cadmus, but some is from before. She lost her planet, you said?” Lena asked, her eyes intense.

 

“Yes. She saw it explode, and everyone she loved died expect for Superman and Astra,” Alex said, wondering if it would help Kara to see her cousin. He hadn’t been there for her – of course, he’d had Lex Luthor and Cadmus to deal with, but Alex couldn’t help but think that he would have been a better caregiver for Kara than Eliza had been. She dismissed the idea for now, deciding to raise it with Astra at a later date.

 

“She tried to die,” Lena said, softly. “When she thought you were dead. She tried to end her life. She flew into space, she tried to drown herself. She tried to strangle herself. None of her attempts worked. She lost her whole world twice,” Lena said, staring into the distance, as if she was watching something happen beyond the bare concrete walls of the DEO. “She was lost and in despair and she tried to return to Rao’s light.”

 

Alex was frozen. This was it; the thing that Kara was holding onto so tightly.

 

“How do you know this?” she asked, blurting the question out gracelessly. “I thought Kryptonians were immune to telepathy.”

 

“They are,” Lena shrugged. “But I am an empath and I can see things that others can’t. I am not omniscient by any means, but I can see pasts and futures sometimes. It doesn’t exactly make sense, and I haven’t got control of it, either. But that’s what my senses are telling me. She tried to end her life, and she is ashamed to tell you because she believes she’s not worthy of you. She thinks it makes her a coward.” Lena shook her head slightly. “She survived the death of a planet, and she still stood up and she smiled and she lived for each one of those lost people, and she believes herself _weak_. People never cease to amaze me.”

 

Alex sat there for a while, saying nothing, while Lena hummed quietly to herself. It was a Kryptonian lullaby, Alex realised, and she found that she was staring at the youngest Luthor, wondering what on earth had been done to her, how she’d been given the abilities she had. They were terrifying in their strength and scope. Alex stood after a while and said goodbye to Lena, but the young woman was lost in her own mind, her eyes slightly glazed. Alex touched her hand briefly and then left her to her thoughts.

 

Alex went to find J’onn, then. He had a way of making her feel better, sometimes, when her mind was in turmoil. She found him sitting in his office, on the phone with someone and simultaneously dealing with a pile of papers on his desk. She knocked and he looked up, irritated, before seeing it was her and waving at her to come in. He finished his phone call, growling at whoever was on the other end, and he stood, enfolding Alex in his arms before she had a chance to say a word.

 

“I’m so sorry, Alex. That must have been hard to hear,” he said, and she realised that she was trembling. She started to sob, then, and J’onn let her go for a second, just long enough to close the blinds in his office so that no-one saw their Assistant Director crying in the arms of the Director. Then he was back, holding her close, rubbing her back gently and murmuring to her in the Martian language. It wasn’t what you might call musical, being rather guttural, but it was his own language, and the fact that he trusted her enough to use it in front of her, to soothe her as he’d once soothed his children, was something that made Alex’s heart swell. It took a few minutes for her to get herself together once she’d stopped crying, but J’onn didn’t let her go until she pulled away, grabbing his second office chair and plonking herself down in it unceremoniously.

 

“She tried to kill herself,” Alex said, quietly. Hank nodded.

 

“You can understand why, can’t you? You knew she was likely still alive, but she was under the impression that you were dead,” J’onn said gravely.

 

“I guess. I just… I wish that she hadn’t been so broken. I wish she hadn’t had to go through that,” Alex said.

 

“Yes. I wish that too. I don’t know Kara well, but if she is your soulmate then I know she is a good person. She did not deserve any of that pain. But she’s here now and regretting gains you nothing. Talk about it, by all means, but spend your time and energy on healing both of you, not on regretting what you’ve lost, Alex. The soulmate bond is a sacred one, in my opinion, and you need to honour it by living in the present and being grateful for what you have, not dwelling on when you didn’t have it,” J’onn said. His words were chiding but his tone was gentle. Alex nodded and leaned on the desk, her head in her hands. Hank returned to his paperwork, his pen scratching against the paper soothingly. Alex stayed there for a little while without speaking, just letting everything sink in, and then she headed home, squeezing J’onn’s shoulder in thanks as she left.

 

When she arrived home, she found Astra waiting for her on her couch, and Kara nowhere to be seen.

 

“She’s asleep,” Astra explained, as Alex looked around in confusion.

 

“Is she okay?” Alex asked, sitting down on the couch next to Astra.

 

“I believe she will be. But this is the beginning of a lengthy process, Alexandra. She needs time to heal her heart, her mind. The things that Cadmus did to her are not easily dealt with, nor are the things that she went through even before that. Seeing her like this,” Astra paused, shaking her head. “Seeing her like this is like poison, like kryptonite in my heart. The child I knew was bright and happy and filled with curiosity and optimism. What she has been through – it has broken her spirit,” Astra said. “I have decided to consult your physicians myself, to speak to them of the… trauma, that I myself have undergone,” Astra continued.

 

“I think that’s a great idea,” Alex said.

 

“I was advising Kara to speak to her therapist, to try to help herself, and it occurred to me that much of what I have experienced since I last saw her has had an effect on me. It is only prudent to deal with it before it becomes a problem,” Astra said.

 

Alex nodded. She’d been thinking about seeing a shrink herself; she had been on antidepressants before but had managed to come off them when Astra became part of her life. She believed in therapy; she just found it hard to speak to someone about her innermost thoughts and feelings. She decided to think about it a little later. For now she had the bombshell that was Kara’s suicide attempts to absorb.

 

“I hope that it helps, Astra. And I’m glad you’re taking steps to help yourself. You deserve it,” Alex said.

 

Astra nodded, gravely. She did not make any move to leave, however.

 

“Is everything okay? I mean, is there something you want to talk about?” Alex asked. It wasn’t like Astra to linger when they haven’t specifically made plans to do something.

 

“I… there is something you should know, but I can’t tell you. It is Kara’s story to tell, should she choose to. I wanted to say that I… I believe that Eliza owes both you and Kara a debt that she may never be able to repay, and it is my intention to let her know that I believe her to have an obligation to you both,” Astra said, her eyes dark and serious.

 

“I learned something today, actually, Astra,” Alex said, sighing and pushing her hair back from her face with one hand. “It was… bad. I never thought how bad things would be for Kara, thinking that I was dead. At least I knew she was out there, somewhere. I… I hope she trusts me enough to tell me about it, one day.”

 

Astra held her eyes for a long moment before nodding again.

 

“Thank you, Alexandra. I am glad that Rao chose you to be my niece’s mate. You are the best of your people, and Kara deserves only the best,” Astra said. Alex’s eyes filled with tears involuntarily, and she turned her face away to wipe at them.

 

“Thank you, Astra,” she said, simply. Astra stood and nodded before flying out of the room between one heartbeat and the next. She was showy and had a lot more control over her powers than Kara did, or perhaps ever would, since she’d been practising with them since she arrived on earth. Alex made a mental note to ask J’onn about arranging some training for Kara once her mental health was a little better.

 

Alex sat on the couch thinking for quite a long time, letting things sink in. That Kara had ever felt so desperate was horrifying to Alex – she had always felt so protective over Kara, but she hadn’t been able to protect her from Eliza or from Cadmus. She hated that she hadn’t been there for the luminous, beautiful woman from light years away. She wished there was a way to go back in time, to find Kara and keep her safe, to take her away from Eliza and her horrible behaviour.

 

After a while she decided to take advantage of the time they had together, rather than moping about what had gone before. She changed and slipped into bed next to Kara, wrapping her arms around Kara’s abdomen and tracing designs on her belly as she sighed and relaxed into Alex’s embrace. Alex slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep not long after, Kara’s sweet scent and presence surrounding her.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the calm after the storm is worse than the storm itself. Or, Eliza comes up with a way to atone and some old impulses catch up with Kara. (Trigger warnings for suicidal thoughts and intentions, and a character's thoughts after the fact.) Also, this is extra long, to make up for the long wait. :)

 

* * *

 

Kara was slowly making progress. For her, it felt as if she was slowly climbing out of a huge pit, sometimes hanging on to the side for dear life, and other times basking in the sunlight as it passed overhead. Alex was her tether to reality. Seeing Alex there, next to her, feeling Alex touching her gently, it was the thing that kept her sane.

 

“Hey sweetie. You ready to go?” Alex asked. Kara had therapy again, and Alex wanted her to meet with Lena and Ale’ara at their new place. Kara was already fascinated by the Luthor girl’s gifts, and did not hold any sort of enmity against her for her mother’s actions. It wasn’t Lena’s fault that her mother had been insane and had no sort of moral compass. Kara was still trying to deal with the memories, with being powerless to prevent Lillian Luthor from cutting into her body and taking out whatever she pleased.

 

“I’m ready,” Kara said, quietly, trying to breathe deeply and banish the feeling that she was still there, stuck in that place forever. She counted the things she could see silently, and waited for Alex to join her. The plant in the corner, that was dying and needed to be watered, it had… eighteen leaves. Six branches from the main section. There were eight panes of glass in the windows in the room. There were now 12 pictures on the wall, all of Kara and Alex or of Astra and Alex, J’onn or others. Not Eliza, not yet. Perhaps someday.

 

Alex came in to the room, shrugging on a brown leather jacket that was one of Kara’s favourites. It hugged her upper body, wrapping around her slim waist snugly. Kara loved holding on to Alex’s body as they rode her motorcycle, and this jacket of Alex’s just made the whole experience more fun.

 

They made it in fifteen minutes, finding themselves in a quiet but pleasant area of National City. The apartment building was being guarded by a number of DEO personnel, not just for Lena and Ale’ara’s safety, but as a lure to any remaining Cadmus operatives. The building was light and airy. Lena and Ale’ara were on the top floor, which made sense, given that Ale’ara was extremely large in her fully transformed form.

 

Kara was a little nervous. Since losing Alex, she had kept herself mostly to herself, and the closest thing she had had to a friend was the IT guy back at CatCo. She was nervous about meeting new people, especially people with incredible psychic powers. She had met the Leptiré before and even spoke their language, or a version of it, at least, since her tongue couldn’t quite make some of the noises that the insectoid’s mouths could.

 

They made their way up in the elevator, Alex taking Kara’s hand in hers and smiling at her warmly.

 

“It’ll be fine, you know. They’ll love you,” she said, confidently.

 

“Thank you,” Kara murmured, smiling back at the woman who had waited for her, who had continued to look for her even after she probably should have given up. Alex was her heart, and she had never felt as lucky as she did right in that moment. She had a sudden desire to drag Alex back to their home and make love to her, and her cheeks heated up at the thought. Sexual desire had been mostly absent since Cadmus had captured her, and she wasn’t used to handling it.

 

“Are you okay?” Alex asked, and Kara looked down at her feet, fighting the blush.

 

“I’m fine,” she said, nodding vehemently, still not looking up. “All fine here.”

 

A few floors away, Lena Luthor was struck with a fit of the giggles, and couldn’t compose herself enough to explain to Ale’ara why – not until a few hours later, that was. Later Ale’ara’s hissing giggles would echo along with her own, as she told her mate of Kara’s embarrassment at her own body’s reaction to its mate.

 

Kara needn’t have worried, as it turned out. Lena was easy to like, and Ale’ara was the relative of a Leptiré matriarch who Kara had met as a child. They all had plenty to talk about, and Alex watched in awe as Kara and the huge insectoid talked about planets she’d never heard of, even after years at the DEO. The way she looked at Kara when she tentatively spoke to Ale’ara in her own language was… heated, to say the least, and Kara’s long-ignored libido roared at her once again, causing a blush and a retreat to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face and neck.

 

When she returned, Lena was smiling at her, a knowing look in her eye, and Kara looked away, fiddling with her glasses nervously. Could Lena read her thoughts? She fervently hoped not, and spent a few minutes clearing her mind and concentrating on just being where she was, using her training in Torquasm-Rao. When she was calm again she spoke at length to Ale’ara about her people and how she had come to be on earth, since her home planet and her people were alive and well. Ale’ara was simply curious about other races and had been flitting to other planets since she came of age to make her own decisions.

 

Kara thanked Lena and Ale’ara both for their part in saving her life. Lena refused to accept her thanks, simply saying that she was making up for her mother’s actions in whatever small way she could. When she said Lillian’s name, however, she frowned, and Kara wondered why. Until they were leaving, at least, and Lena pulled her aside to speak to her.

 

“I had a feeling, Kara Zor-El, when you and I spoke of Lillian Luthor’s actions. I can’t be more specific at this time, but I do not believe my mother’s plans have all been carried out as yet. I caution you to make a backup plan in case something should happen to the DEO or to Alex and you are left alone. You need to be prepared for what she might have done. She was a genius – a twisted and evil genius, but a genius nonetheless, and you should not underestimate her,” Lena said, her face serious.

 

“I will make some plans, Lena. Thank you,” Kara said, before hugging the human woman as tightly as she dared. “I know you won’t accept my thanks, but they are yours anyway. You suffered at her hands for years, Lena. You deserve my thanks, because you helped me when you didn’t have to.”

 

“You are… you are welcome, then, Kara Zor-El. And make your plans. I have a feeling you’ll need them,” Lena said.

 

Kara nodded and they headed to the DEO for her therapy session with Dr Calder. They talked a little about Kara’s life on Krypton, and then they talked about Cadmus, about Lillian. Dr Calder helped her work her way through the feelings that remembering her time their brought forth, encouraged her to continue in her meditation and meeting with Astra to practise Torquasm-Rao, and she left to meet Alex, who was waiting for her in her office.

 

“Hey,” Alex greeted her, looking at her in concern as she took in the tightness around Kara’s eyes and her rigid posture. “Are you okay?”

 

“No worse than usual,” Kara said, smiling tightly. “It’s not an easy process.” She shrugged, and the Kryptonite bracelet on her arm shifted, making her uncomfortably aware of the radiation seeping through her body, weakening her.

 

“How about a bath when we get home, Stargirl?” Alex asked, standing and putting her arm around Kara’s shoulder, even though Kara was the taller of the two, now. It was still just as comforting as it had always been, however.

 

“That sounds amazing,” Kara said, and once again, her libido fired up, thoughts of bubble baths and Alex and champagne mixing together in a haze of lust. Kara blushed again.

 

“Okay, that’s like the third time today, what’s up with the blushing?” Alex asked, raising an eyebrow at Kara quizzically as she picked up her jacket with her free hand.

 

“I’ll tell you later, how about that?” Kara said, ducking her head and trying to avoid Alex’s eyes. She really didn’t want to have this conversation at the DEO, of all places.

 

“Okay,” Alex said, frowning a little but letting it go.

 

Alex cooked, throwing together a decent lasagne and salad, and they drank wine and watched the next item on their Netflix queue. Alex offered again to run a bath for Kara, and then stopped, tilting her head slightly.

 

“You gonna tell me about the blushing?” she asked.

 

“I… do I have to?” Kara asked, looking up at Alex, trying the puppy dog eyes.

 

“Uh uh, Stargirl. Give it up,” Alex said, shaking her head gently.

 

“I…  I guess I… Rao, I don’t even know how to say this!” Kara burst out, her blush heating her entire body until she felt like she was going to explode. “I felt some… a lot, actually, of attraction to you earlier, when we were in the elevator, and then a little later, and I just… it took me by surprise. Not that I haven’t always been attracted to you, but this is… different, you know?” Kara bumbled, tugging at her hair a little, frustrated.

 

“Oh,” Alex said, beginning to blush herself. “You mean, like… sexually.”

 

“Yes, Alex,” Kara said, sighing. “I haven’t felt much of that since Cadmus took me, but it seems like my libido, I guess, is recovering? And now I would like to please never speak of this ever again, thank you very much,” she finished, huffing slightly, her arms folded to her chest.

 

Alex was very still for a moment, and then she moved forward a little, taking Kara’s chin in her hand, lifting her head gently.

 

“Look at me?” she asked, gently.

 

Kara lifted her eyes and looked at Alex, thoroughly embarrassed and verging on humiliated.

 

“You’re not the only one, Kara. I mean, I know it’s kind of late for us to be talking about this, but we’ve been apart for a long time, and it’s not surprising that you would feel a little different after how Cadmus treated you. Maybe this is a sign that you’re healing,” Alex said, and her voice was so low and understanding, so caring, that Kara wanted to weep and sing all at once. How could she have been lucky enough to have found this person, this amazing woman, to be her perfect match?

 

Kara threw herself into Alex’s arms, still controlled enough not to hurt her, but hard enough that Alex would know how much she needed her. She kissed Alex’s neck, burying her face in her hair, and whispered how much she loved her into Alex’s ear in every language she could think of. She could feel Alex trembling against her, and she held her just a little tighter in response. She could feel that Alex was affected by her closeness, her admission of desire, and so was she. But it wasn’t time for that sort of intimacy for them, not until Kara was a little more healed. So she stayed there, holding Alex, until they were both calmer, and then Alex went to run a bath – just for Kara – and afterwards they went to bed, so closely entwined that they might as well have been one body.

 

***

 

Kara decided that, given that Lena seemed to have been instrumental in saving her life from Lillian before, she should take her advice. She went to see Astra the following day, and Alex spent a little time with one of her friends from the DEO, running and sparring.

 

“Aunt Astra?” Kara asked, as they were both sipping at their coffee quietly.

 

“Yes, Little One?” Astra asked.

 

“I spoke to Lena Luthor yesterday. She says that Lillian had other plans, and that things are not over yet. She told me to make backup plans,” Kara said.

 

Astra, a General on Krypton, was a master of strategy. She suggested several courses of action to Kara after giving the matter some thought, and they decided on two of them. They spent the remainder of the day setting up safe houses. They ensured that there was enough food to feed hungry Kryptonians for months, and stashed guns and tactical gear for any humans that might work with them. They also stashed anti-Kryptonite shields and meds in several different places, some hidden where humans would be literally unable to find them. There were several satellites in low-earth orbit that now had packages attached to them with equipment in them to aid against Cadmus, should they rise again. And Kara hid a number of packages inside deep-sea trenches, recalling how she had buried Eliza’s Kryptonite syringes in the Marianas Trench inside solid rock.

 

Feeling that she had done everything she could to prepare physically, she and Astra met with J’onn and Alex to talk to them about Lena’s prediction and to ask them to be prepared, too, should Cadmus somehow manage to infiltrate the DEO.

 

Kara was happy to put the matter out of her mind, because she wanted to spend time with Alex without worrying about trying to fight using powers she had barely ever used against a rogue ex-government agency who had already almost killed her once. She decided that concentrating on the possibility was not going to be helpful for her mental health, and so she focused her mind on her life in the present.

 

Alex took her to see a movie called Guardians of the Galaxy, cautioning her not to take any of it seriously as it wasn’t meant to be scientifically accurate. Kara was enthralled from the beginning, more by the music than any of the plot, particularly, but she still laughed throughout and afterwards, they walked by the river eating ice cream, and she kissed Alex under the almost full moon, letting her heart speak for her.

 

“I love you, Kara Zor-El,” Alex said, as they parted and started walking home.

 

“Khap zhou rrip,” Kara said, absently, her fingers tangled with Alex’s.

 

“What did you say?” Alex asked, her mouth hanging open a little.

 

“I said I love you?” Kara said, confused.

 

“No, you said… cap zow rip?” Alex said, her accent terrible.

 

“I did?” Kara asked, confused and slightly stunned.

 

“You did…” Alex said. “Was that…?”

 

“Kryptonese, yes,” Kara said, staring at Alex. “I haven’t spoken it in such a long time. I mean, even with Astra, we’ve been mostly speaking English. I guess I feel really at home with you,” she concluded, her smile small but sweet.

 

“I love you so much, Kara,” Alex said, tears in her eyes. “I want to know every part of you, every single part.”

 

Kara nodded, and they kissed again, slowly, languidly, like they’d been kissing for years. It tasted like home, and some part of Kara settled, there, in that moment, knowing that she and Alex were meant to be together, that somewhere out there someone had fated them to be a couple despite the ocean of stars between them.

 

***

 

Alex was concerned about Lena’s prediction about her mother’s plans, and worked with several people within the DEO – people she trusted with her life, and more importantly, with Kara’s life – making plans to ensure that if the DEO were infiltrated, they would have backup stashes of equipment. They also ensured that there was always a time when one or other of their little group was away from the base, to make sure that they weren’t all caught inside or outside of the DEO. Their group consisted of J’onn, Vasquez, Alex and a young lieutenant by the name of Winn Schott, who had joined them after a member of staff from his old workplace had disappeared under strange circumstances. They’d caught him hacking their databases trying to find the person, but he had never given up the name, saying only that he was pretty sure she was an alien. He’d proved to Alex that day that he had heart and that he actually cared about aliens and his tech skills were second to none.

 

They set up extra surveillance within the DEO base that was so well-hidden they didn’t believe anyone would be able to find it. The tiny cameras sent their information to an outside server that only their team had access to.

 

They recruited some extra cover from other DEO bases around the country, setting up a small, mobile force that would be stationed outside of DEO headquarters. This was to ensure that if they were attacked from within the DEO, there would still be an outside force ready to break in. As an extra measure, they set Winn to doubling their cyber security.

 

Kara met Alex at her office after another session with Dr Calder. Alex was clearing up, getting ready to leave, when someone yelled behind her.

 

“Linda?!”

 

She turned and saw a guy she knew. Will? Wayne? He was staring at her as if he’d seen a ghost.

 

“Um, hi?” Kara said, as he stepped into Alex’s office. She was still trying to remember his name, but she knew he worked at CatCo. Her IT friend.  “How are you?” she tried.

 

He looked at her incredulously. There were tears in his eyes.

 

“Winn, are you okay?” Alex asked, finally realising that something was going on. She stood and looked from Winn to Kara, confused.

 

“You… you’re alive?” Winn said, stunned. “I thought you were dead! You disappeared, and there was no sign of you, and no-one but me and Miss Grant seemed to be worried about you. I tried to trace you but there were virtually no records of a Linda Lee… I tried but you were gone, and…”

 

He moved forward and enfolded Kara in his arms. Kara returned the hug instinctively, though in truth she was more than a little uncomfortable.

 

“Wait a minute,” Alex said, thoughtfully. “Winn, is… Linda, the alien you were trying to find when we caught you?”

 

Winn stepped back, keeping one hand on Kara’s forearm.

 

“Yeah. Yeah, she was. She was such a nice person. She cared, and she was there for like, five minutes, but Miss Grant was ready to raise the alarm using all of CatCo’s resources,” Winn said, looking at Kara intently. “I told her I’d try to find you. I wish I’d been able to help, Linda.”

 

“It’s Kara, actually,” she said, smiling at him. “Kara Danvers.”

 

“What, Danvers like… Alex Danvers?” he asked, looking from Kara to Alex in confusion.

 

“Yes. My mom took Kara in when she arrived on earth. We grew up together,” Alex said. Winn looked relieved, for some reason.

 

“So, where were you?” Winn asked. Kara winced.

 

“I’m not sure I can talk about that, uh, Winn. I was kidnapped by Cadmus, that’s all I can tell you right now. If you want details, I’m sure that Alex will give you access to my files,” Kara said, looking away, her heart starting to thump in an automatic fear response. Alex moved closer, putting one arm around Kara’s waist.

 

“It’s okay honey, breathe,” Alex said, murmuring.

 

Kara closed her eyes and concentrated on Alex’s heartbeat, trying to ground herself. The sound of Alex’s blood swishing through her arteries, pulsing steadily through her veins, reminded Kara of all the nights that they had spent in each other’s arms. It calmed her quickly, and she was able to open her eyes a few seconds later.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said to Winn. “I get these… panic attacks, I guess you call them? It was a difficult time for me.”

 

“I’m sorry to bring it up,” Winn said. He was looking at Alex’s arm around Kara’s waist, his eyes narrowing a little. “I… do you think you could go and see Miss Grant, Linda? I mean, Kara?” he asked, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I think she would really feel a lot better if she knew you were okay.”

 

“I will, Winn. Thank you for caring so much. I appreciate it,” Kara said, feeling a little fragile.

 

“You kind of have that effect on people, Kara,” he said, with a wry smile, looking again at Alex’s arm, still wrapped around Kara’s waist. “I’m so glad to see you’re alive.”

 

Kara nodded and tried to smile. She wasn’t sure it was a successful smile. Winn nodded and turned, going back to whatever he was doing before. Alex went to the door and closed it, flipping the switch to make the windows opaque. She led Kara to the small couch in the corner.

 

“You doing okay there?” she asked, quietly.

 

“Mmm,” Kara said, letting her body lean in to Alex’s. “I might be a little overwhelmed?”

 

“I think that is a pretty fair reaction to what just happened,” Alex said, pulling Kara into her body and kissing the top of her head. “That was a bit of a surprise. I can’t believe you’re the reason Winn ended up here.”

 

“Yeah. Crazy, huh? I don’t know why he thought I was an alien, though. I never did anything to expose myself at CatCo. I had already had too many close calls,” Kara said, thoughtfully.

 

“I think sometimes you just… can’t help it, Kara. You’re not human, and it’s not possible to be fully aware of that all the time. Some things are just instinctive. You still say ‘Rao’ instead of ‘God’, for starters. I mean, there’s no reason for Winn to know who Rao is, but it might have started him thinking. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, though. Now that Cadmus is gone, and the DEO knows where you are, you’re protected.”

 

Kara hummed quietly. They stayed in silence for a little while, just enjoying each other’s company, and then headed home, Kara waving at Winn as they left. They ate together and went to bed a little earlier than normal, trading kisses and caresses that they both knew weren’t leading to anything; it was just that Kara needed to be close. Her session with Dr Calder had been intense enough, but then to see someone from her pre-Cadmus life looking at her like she was a ghost – it was a bit too much. Alex held her tightly when she started to cry, encouraging her to let the tension out, and Kara appreciated that more than she could say. When she was on Krypton, her mother had offered the sort of comfort that Alex did – just encouraging Kara to let her feelings out, to let the pain and tension leave her body. Her father had always tried to fix the problem, had tried to present solutions so that Kara would stop crying. It had always made things worse, because sometimes people just needed to cry. It seemed to make Zor-El panic, somehow. Kara laughed quietly to herself as she sniffled into Alex’s shoulder. Alex didn’t ask for an explanation of her laughter, however, just squeezing a little tighter. It was exactly what Kara needed, and she felt love swell in her chest.

 

“I love you,” she murmured.

 

“I love you too, Stargirl,” Alex said, kissing Kara’s neck. “Always.”

 

They drifted off a while later, still entangled together, Kara silently thanking Rao for bringing her here, to this woman.

 

It was a few days after the Winn incident that Astra and Eliza came to see them. Kara had been resting while Alex was at work, letting her body and mind recover from everything Cadmus had put her through. She was considering going to see Miss Grant, but she wasn’t quite ready to face the Queen of All Media. She still had to go to see Ben, Tegaren’s mate. She wasn’t looking forward to that.

 

Astra and Eliza arrived with a sense of barely-contained excitement. Astra was a fairly stoic individual, and it surprised Kara to see the animation on her face when she and Eliza arrived.

 

“What’s going on, Aunt Astra?” Kara asked, after they were all settled with coffee and Eliza’s chocolate pecan pie.

 

“Eliza has something she wishes to tell you,” Astra said, and her lips twitched involuntarily into a smile.

 

Kara took a deep, quiet breath, trying to prepare herself for whatever Eliza had to say. She certainly didn’t expect anything good. She looked at Eliza, who was looking from Alex to Kara and back.

 

“What is it, Eliza?” Kara asked, trying to be patient.

 

“I… I asked your cousin, Kara, if I could do some research at his Fortress of Solitude. He has a lot of Kryptonian tech there, crystals and birthing chambers and so much information. He even has your pod, and an AI of your mother.”

 

Kara stiffened. She couldn’t believe that Kal hadn’t, at the very least, told her about this Fortress of his. Her pod was her property, not his. And an AI of her mother? Why would he have kept that from her? She felt her eyes heat, and she unconsciously touched the button on her bracelet that blunted her powers. She clenched her fists and took a deep breath. Alex reached out and took Kara’s hand, rubbing her thumb across Kara’s knuckles. It helped to centre her.

 

“Please, go on,” Kara said. Eliza had shrunk back a little, it appeared, but Kara couldn’t bring herself to be sorry for showing signs of anger. It wasn’t like Eliza didn’t deserve it, after all. She noted that Astra had taken Eliza’s hand and was stroking it in much the same way as Alex was stroking Kara’s.

 

“So, Astra and I went there and we spent a lot of time researching. There are a lot of things for you to see there, and I think you may want to look at some of the devices to see if you can get them working – Astra tells me that you were the scientist, not her,” Eliza said.

 

Kara glanced at Astra and smiled.

 

“Perhaps I could have been, once,” she said, sadly.

 

There was a beat of silence before Eliza continued.

 

“I discovered some references to a ceremony, a way to bond Kryptonians and non-Kryptonians together. Because Kryptonians are super-powered on yellow sun planets, and on those with a blue sun – well, they might as well be gods. So your ancestors worked on a way to even out the differences. There is a ceremony that you can undertake that will link you together for as long as you live. It will either dramatically extend Alex’s lifespan or it will reduce yours. It’s not a decision to take lightly, of course. My belief is that it will extend Alex’s lifespan, but there’s no way to know,” Eliza said. She appeared to be finished with her speech, and she sighed in relief, melting into Astra’s side. Astra wrapped an arm around her and stroked Eliza’s side, murmuring comforting words in her ear.

 

Kara was dazed. A way to extend Alex’s life? Or to shorten hers. That part was a little concerning, of course, but if it meant that she got to live her life with Alex, however short, she would much rather have that than potentially living for centuries or even millenia alone. She turned to look at Alex, who looked almost as dazed as Kara herself.

 

“Are you okay?” Kara asked, seeing the tension in Alex’s muscles. “We don’t have to rush, zrhueiao,” she said, in a comforting murmur.

 

“I can’t… what if it makes you die before me? I couldn’t cope with that, Kara. I couldn’t live without you, not after all of this shit that’s happened. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t…” Alex trailed off.

 

“Don’t worry, Alex. We believe that Rao is present in all of our scientific discoveries. He would not allow us to be together for a short time only to break us in pieces. Rao is not cruel,” Kara said.

 

Astra nodded, looking at Alex intensely.

 

“Rao has only a few children. He would not destroy them for no reason. If anything, you might live for millenia so that you can repopulate a new Krypton,” Astra said, the edge of her mouth twitching upwards.

 

“Oh. Wow,” Alex said, looking even more stunned. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

 

Kara smiled at Alex warmly.

 

“You are under no obligations, zrhueiao. We are soulmates but that does not mean we must have children or do anything we don’t want to. I only want to be with you and to make you happy. Anything else would be a bonus,” Kara said, honestly.

 

“If I may… Eliza and I found this information, and the bonding ceremony is ready, but Kal-El wishes to undergo the bond first with his beloved, the reporter,” Astra said.

 

Kara nodded. She understood. Kal had been here the longest, after all. She didn’t begrudge him the opportunity to bond with Lois Lane before she was able to bond with her mate. If Alex wanted to, of course.

 

“And you, Aunt Astra?” Kara asked politely. “Will you be undertaking the ceremony with your soulmate?” Kara said, carefully avoiding looking at Eliza.

 

“If she is willing, and only after you and Alexandra have bonded, yes,” Astra said.

 

“Thank you,” Kara said, looking at Eliza and Astra briefly before returning her attention to her coffee and the pie that Eliza had made. It was delicious. Eliza had made her Chocolate Pecan Pie a few times after Alex’s alleged death, and it had made Kara feel better, at least momentarily. She didn’t want to eat it, now, after thinking about that. She put her fork down carefully and drank some of her coffee, staring out of the windows at nothing.

 

Alex and Astra managed to carry the rest of the conversation between them, but things eventually became too awkward, so Astra and Eliza got up to leave.

 

“Girls, before I go. I want to say that I know nothing will ever make up for what I took from you both, but I hope that you will undertake this ceremony. You deserve the chance of a long life together,” Eliza said.

 

Kara nodded at her, expressionless, and Eliza swallowed before turning away, Astra leading her quietly out of the apartment. Kara went to sit down again, her mind racing. This bonding ceremony was, of course, good news. It could be the best news she’d had since finding Alex again. But Kal-El – he had all of these relics of their people, and he’d never made the slightest effort to try to give anything to Kara. Her mother’s AI was clearly her property. In fact, all of it was, because she was the Eldest of the House of El, despite appearances. So the crystal he used to build the Fortress was hers, as was everything contained therein.

 

“You okay, honey?” Alex asked, sitting next to her and taking her hand.

 

“Yeah,” Kara said, but it sounded unconvincing to her own ears.

 

“Sure you are. That’s why you look like you could set the entire apartment on fire. Do you know that your eyes are actually glowing?” Alex asked, amused.

 

Kara swore softly and concentrated, backing off her anger and letting her heat vision dissipate. She should have left her bracelet active.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said, sighing. “I guess I’m a little angry.”

 

“At who? Eliza, or Kal-El?” Alex asked, astute as always.

 

“Him, mostly. I mean, I know what he’s had to deal with. But to take away my ship, to take away everything that I had from Krypton? And he never even tried to find me, Alex. He was the reason I came here, the reason I’m on this fucking planet in the first place. I came here prepared to look after a baby boy. I was only 13 years old, Alex. And I would have done it. And he didn’t even look after me for a day. I don’t want to feel this way, Alex, but I… I hate him. He’s not my cousin. He’s nothing to me,” Kara said, bitterly. Her eyes were beginning to redden again, so she blinked furiously.

 

“I don’t blame you, Kara. I can’t stand the guy. He might be all kinds of wonderful to the rest of the world, but the rest of the world didn’t see what he did to you. He abandoned you, and while I’m glad that it meant that you and I found each other, I don’t forgive him,” Alex said. Her fists were clenched and her jaw was tight.

 

“I’m so glad I have you, Alex,” Kara choked out, tears filling her eyes. “I don’t deserve you.”

 

“Oh my god, shut the hell up, Kara! I don’t deserve you, if there’s any such thing. You’re practically a demi-god on this planet, you fell down from the heavens, and somehow you managed to end up with me. I’m the lucky one, Kara. You’re so amazing; you have no idea,” Alex said, smiling. She looked a little frustrated, however.

 

“Alex, you don’t know what I did when I thought you were gone. I’m not… you deserve someone strong, not someone broken. You’re so amazing; you managed to get your life together and you became this badass special agent scientist! What did I do? I got myself caught by Cadmus and ended up missing half my body parts. The only reason I’m alive is because of you and Astra and Jeremiah. I would have died in there. I should have died in there,” Kara said, tears running down her face. “I should have died with my family, and then you never would have had to deal with any of this,” she said, hopelessly, brokenly.

 

Alex wrapped her arms around Kara, pulling her tight against her body, and kissed her hair, murmuring how much she loved Kara, how strong she was, and Kara just broke down again, for the second time in less than a week, letting Alex comfort her while she let the pain out. She didn’t deserve it, but she couldn’t help but be weak and crave the comfort that Alex offered. But she was thinking… none of this was fair on Alex. Maybe if Kara was gone the universe would give her a new soulmate, a real one. Not a broken toy that used to be a Kryptonian.

 

Alex held her tightly for hours, whispering softly to her and occasionally kissing her hair or her cheeks. When Kara was calm, Alex ordered some food for them and they ate it in a cocoon of blankets on the couch before heading to bed. Despite her outward calm, however, Kara’s mind was boiling away with ideas. After all, she had a little bit of Kryptonite now, and that meant she wasn’t invincible. One slash and she could be gone, and Alex would be able to start her life again. She decided she would wait until Alex went to work the next day, and then find a place away from people where she could end things and return to her family, in Rao’s light.

 

Alex left as usual in the morning, dropping a kiss onto Kara’s head and reminding her that she had therapy that afternoon. Kara smiled at her, memorising the lines of Alex’s face, and she told her soulmate that she loved her. One final time.

 

Alex left, unaware of Kara’s planning, and Kara took a moment to pray to Rao that this was the right thing to do. Alex deserved better than a broken Kryptonian. She made her way around the apartment, clearing up the few belongings she had managed to accumulate. She was still wearing Alex’s clothes for the most part – they needed to go shopping for Kara’s clothes, but hadn’t quite managed yet. And the black clothes suited her mood, anyway.

 

She had folded everything into neat piles for Alex to keep or dispose of, when she saw a picture that Alex had taken of them a week or so before in the cinema. It was a selfie, and Kara was kissing Alex’s cheek. She wondered where the smile had come from. Whatever happiness she’d been feeling since she returned to Alex’s life, it was gone now, lost under the burden of her broken mind and lost soul. She took the picture from the frame and was about to leave when there was a knock at the door. She dipped her glasses down and saw that Lena was standing outside the apartment door. Kara swore under her breath and decided to slip out the window. When she opened it, however, there was a huge pink butterfly blocking her way.

 

“Kara Zor-El, please stay inside. My mate wishes to speak with you. I do not wish to, but I will use force to detain you if I must.”

 

Kara stood there, considering her options, and was stunned when Ale’ara appeared to rear back, letting out a high-pitched soundwave that completely incapacitated Kara for a few seconds. When she came back to herself, her ears were bleeding, the window was closed, and Ale’ara and Lena were both standing in front of her, looking down at her with crossed arms.

 

“I suppose that’s a hard no on the self-killing, then?” Kara said, sighing. She stood carefully, her head spinning from whatever Ale’ara had done to her. “I would offer you a drink, but I’m not sure I can stand for long enough,” Kara muttered. An arm caught hers and she let herself be pulled towards the couch, collapsing onto it. Ale’ara had disappeared, and Kara’s hearing was still too impaired for her to work out where the butterfly lady had gone.

 

“She’s making us some tea,” Lena said, turning Kara’s shoulders so that they were facing each other, knees almost touching.

 

“How did you know?” Kara asked, sullenly.

 

“I had a vision, I suppose you’d call it. I saw you doing what you were planning to do, and I saw Alexandra’s life afterwards. You would really do this to her after all she’s done to get you back, Kara?” Lena asked, her tone gently chiding. “I know you’re in pain; I feel it. But she doesn’t deserve to lose you again, Kara. Not after she just got you back.”

 

Ale’ara appeared in front of Kara then, somehow managing to hold several cups of hot tea with her various limbs, placing them carefully on the coffee table.

 

“I’m sorry, Kara Zor-El, but my mate told me to stop you by any means I had at my disposal. If I’d allowed you to fly, you would have been able to damage my wings and I would have been the one whose life ended, then. So I used my voice. Your pain should stop soon.”

 

“It’s fine,” Kara said. (It was not fine. Her head was going to be ringing for days. But she was beginning to realise the delusion she’d fallen into, that being that Alex would be better off without her. Perhaps if Kara had never come into her life, it would have been easier. It might have been easier without soul marks, too. But now? If Alex felt half of what Kara did for her soulmate, she would be lost without her.

 

“Rao, what was I thinking?” Kara groaned, not expecting an answer.

 

“You weren’t. You were letting your pain and depression tell you that you aren’t worthy, that you don’t deserve someone like Alex,” Lena said, her eyes clear and her face serious. “The mind is a complex thing, Kara, and it sometimes turns against its owner. That you are still here even after the losses you’ve endured is a huge testament to the strength you have. You are still here, and you are going to be fine, one day. For now, please don’tt shut Alex out, and let your family and friends care for you.”

 

Lena was crying. Kara couldn’t figure out why. She didn’t even know the Luthor.

 

“I know you think I’m being melodramatic, Kara, but if you could feel half of what I can feel – the love Alex has for you, the pain that you carry around, the love you bear for Alex… you would know that I do not want to lose you. You are a good person, Kara Zor-El, and my life will be much poorer without you in it.”

 

“You saw a future with me in it?” Kara asked, surprised despite herself at the scope of this woman’s gifts.

 

“Yes. And I’ll thank you not to deprive me of a friend I haven’t even had the pleasure of getting to know, yet,” Lena said, but she was smiling, now, sensing that Kara had abandoned her plans.

 

“I’m sorry, both of you,” Kara said, her head hanging. “I shouldn’t have… I just wanted some peace.”

 

“You do not owe us any explanations, Kara Zor-El. The pain you have endured… it is unimaginable. We wish only for your happiness, and Alex’s,” Ale’ara said, in her hissing, singing whisper.

 

“Thank you,” Kara said, quietly. Ale’ara leaned an upper limb on Kara’s shoulder, and Lena took the hand closest to her and squeezed it.

 

After the immediate crisis had passed, and Kara’s ears had stopped bleeding, they had tea and talked for a while, and Lena urged Kara to tell her therapist and Alex what had happened.

 

“We won’t tell anyone, Kara, but it is something you need to talk about or else you will bottle it up and it will happen again. Believe me,” Lena said, and something about her tone alerted Kara.

 

“You’ve been through this?” Kara asked.

 

“My mother died, leaving me with the Luthor family, one of whom grew up to try to kill Superman. And my new mother discovered I had some psychic abilities and locked me up and experimented on me for nearly twenty years, Kara. So yes, I have been through this. Many, many times. Lillian always seemed to know when she had pushed me too far, and she always brought me back. So believe me when I say that I understand how strong the impulse can be.”

 

Kara nodded, tears starting to flow, for some reason, at Lena’s confession. Lena, too, was crying, and Ale’ara was making a high-pitched keening that made the hair on the back of Kara’s neck stand on end. They cried together and, after they had all calmed down, they watched some silly comedy about American cops and laughed together.

 

Lena and Ale’ara insisted on going to the DEO with her, which meant calling a DEO van to transport them. Ale’ara was a little conspicuous, and Kara cursed herself quietly for making the Leptiré expose herself by flying around in the daytime. They left her at the DEO building and Kara embraced them both carefully.

 

“Remember, Kara. Talk to Alex,” Lena said, as she squeezed Kara’s shoulders. “It will help.”

 

Kara nodded, and made her way to Dr Calder’s office, where she tearfully confessed what she had intended to do that morning. Dr Calder was concerned, but glad that Kara had friends who would intercede for her. She also said that she was working with some of the DEO’s scientists to produce medications that would work for aliens like Kara, because so many of the DEO’s charges were suffering from depression and PTSD from whatever incidents had led them to Earth in the first place, not to mention the horrors inflicted on them by Cadmus.

 

Kara felt a little better when she was done talking to Dr Calder, because no-one was threatening to lock her up for her own protection, and Dr Calder had given her a lot of mental exercises to concentrate on when she felt ‘that’ way again. But she knew she had to talk to Alex, and was not looking forward to it.

 

She made her way to Alex’s office, finding her working on paperwork again, squinting at her computer.

 

“Hey,” Kara said, waving half-heartedly.

 

“Hey,” Alex said, looking up at her and smiling, and then immediately frowning. “What’s wrong?”

 

Kara’s heart sank. It seemed like all of the time she spent with Alex was dragging her soulmate down, and she was tired of it. She was tired of herself.

 

“Nothing. Can we go home and talk?” Kara asked, and Alex nodded, still looking concerned. “I’m fine, I promise,” Kara said.

 

They left and headed home on Alex’s bike, Kara wrapped around her, enjoying the sensation of the soft leather of Alex’s jacket against her face and the feeling of the wind whipping by. It was a lot like flying, but with someone else in control, and there was something very freeing about it.

 

When they got home, Alex fixed them some pasta and wine, sitting down at the table with Kara opposite her.

 

“So, Stargirl. Spill,” she said.

 

“I don’t know how to start,” Kara said, taking a mouthful of the delicious pasta with cheese sauce and bacon that Alex had put together for them.

 

“The start, is usually the best place,” Alex said, with a smile, but her gaze was unrelenting. Kara realised she wasn’t going to get out of this conversation, and she sighed, trying to let some of the tension out of her body.

 

She told Alex about the attempts she’d made when she thought Alex was dead. It was clear that Alex already knew about them, however, because she didn’t look shocked, only a little upset.

 

“And? That’s not all, is it?” Alex asked, astute as ever.

 

Kara took a few more mouthfuls of pasta and then confessed, in a small voice, what her intentions had been that morning, how she had been feeling, and she told Alex about Lena and Ale’ara interceding.

 

“So when you told me you loved me this morning, you knew that you were planning to do… this, and that it was going to be the last time?” Alex asked, face expressionless.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Okay,” Alex said, standing abruptly and throwing her food into the trash. She put her plate in the sink and left the room, going into her bedroom where she lay on the bed. Her heart was thumping hard but it was steady, and she wasn’t crying. Kara wasn’t sure what to do, so she finished her pasta and sent her Aunt Astra a text. 15 seconds later Astra entered the apartment through the open window. She was at Kara’s side in a heartbeat, and she squeezed her niece in her arms, whispering Kryptonian terms of endearment into her ears.

 

“I must go and look after Alexandra now,” Astra said.

 

“Thank you,” Kara said.

 

“Perhaps you should have a bath and read a book? Something to take your mind off everything?” Astra suggested.

 

“I think I will,” Kara said, nodding.

 

“Remember that I can see through walls too, my dear niece. I will not let you damage yourself,” Astra said, eyes blazing.

 

“I know. I’m sorry, Aunt Astra. I… I’m sorry I’m so weak.”

 

“You are the opposite of weak, Kara Zor-El, and it is past time that you realised that,” Astra said, shaking her head and pulling Kara a little closer. “I love you, my Little One.”

 

“I love you,” Kara said, a little morosely, before going to run herself a bath. She chose a new-ish novel from Alex’s bookshelves, a romantic comedy by the looks of it. It didn’t seem to be Alex’s style, so Kara made a mental note to ask her where it had come from. Kara ran herself a scalding hot bath, heating it a little extra with her heat vision so that it was toasty when she got in, and she spent the next hour or so submerged in red-hot water as she read about a couple falling in and out (and in and out and in again) of love.

 

She heard Alex crying and talking to Astra, and she switched on her Kryptonite bracelet to dull her senses. It wasn’t her place to listen in to her soulmate’s private thoughts. If Alex wanted to talk to Kara, she would have done so immediately, rather than withdrawing. Kara put it all out of her mind for a while.

 

Once she was done with her bath, she wrapped herself up in a huge fluffy bathrobe, and when she went into the main body of the apartment she found Alex and Astra sitting on the couch, drinking whiskey and laughing.

 

“Hey,” Kara said, quietly.

 

“Hello, Little One,” Astra said, equally quiet. “Would you like a drink?”

 

“It doesn’t affect me,” Kara said.

 

“It does when you wear Kryptonite jewels,” Astra pointed out.

 

“Why not?” Kara shrugged. Astra poured her a small measure and Kara winced as she drank a little. “Rao! Why do humans drink this stuff? It tastes like drain cleaner!”

 

Alex sniggered.

 

“Well, you would know, Stargirl,” she said, without looking up.

  
“What do you mean?” Astra asked, looking back and forth from Kara to Alex.

 

“Kara here didn’t bother to read the label on a bottle once, just tried to drink the stuff inside. It was actual drain cleaner.”

 

“In my defence, I was very thirsty and I’d only been on earth for like, a week. I didn’t know that stuff that came in those weird shapes was for cleaning the bathroom,” Kara retorted. The alcohol was beginning to give her a pleasant buzz, but it would seem that, even with Kryptonite, she wasn’t going to be getting drunk.

 

Astra snorted.

 

“I am pleased that I did not settle with humans at first. At least I avoided some of those pitfalls.”

 

“Yeah. Lucky you,” Kara teased. Astra pulled Kara close, hugging her tightly. Kara let herself enjoy the moment. At least Alex was still talking to her. And Astra still loved her.

 

Astra left a while later, and Kara felt the atmosphere change. She pulled her legs up underneath her and wrapped her arms around one of the couch cushions, looking fixedly at the television. It was quiet for a little while, but then Alex stood, taking Kara’s arm and gently pulling her towards the bed, turning the lights off as she went.

 

When they were lying down, Alex just looked at Kara, saying nothing. Kara didn’t know what to say. How do you explain to someone that your brain made you feel like you were in a burning building and your only option was to jump? How do you get that across without sounding like a lunatic? So she bit her lip and looked away, only to have Alex grab her face, not entirely gently, and turn it back so that they were, once again, staring at each other silently.

 

“I… I don’t know what to say, how to make this better…” Kara began, but Alex didn’t let her finish, pulling Kara close to her and covering Kara’s mouth with her own. Kara was a little surprised at first, but when Alex bit her lip so hard that she actually felt something akin to a sting, her libido roared back to life and she flipped Alex over on her back, kissing her hard, her hands pinning Alex to the bed. Alex tried to flip them back, but Kara wouldn’t let her, pushing her down and kissing her until they were both a groaning mess.

 

Kara broke away with some difficulty when she found her hand wandering into Alex’s pants. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to do this, not at all. She wanted Alex so fiercely that it shocked her. But she didn’t want their first time together to be tainted with anger and heartbreak and grief.

 

“I’m sorry,” Kara said, automatically, sitting up – still straddling Alex – and wiping her mouth absently. “I… this isn’t the time, for this.”

 

“No, it’s not,” Alex agreed. “But I want you, Kara. I need to feel you, because you nearly left me today and I am so _tired_ of losing everything over and over again, Kara Zor-El. Please, just, touch me?”

 

Kara couldn’t refuse Alex anything, so she slipped her hand under Alex’s shirt, running her hands up her back, massaging and stroking the skin there, and she kissed Alex, much more gently than before, trying to pour her heart into her movements, trying to show Alex that none of this was about lack of love, but rather about too much pain. One of them started to cry, then, because their faces were wet. Kara moved so that she was lying next to Alex, and she pulled her close, as close as she could get.

 

“I love you, zrhueiao. I would never leave you if I had a choice. Believe me. This is not what I want. Or most of me, at least, because some of me only wants to return to my family, to my people, to live in Rao’s light with them. But Rao sent me here to you, and I want a life with you, my Alex. I am sorry that I’m so broken, love. I will try to do better,” Kara murmured, ashamed and disgusted at herself for the pain she’d caused.

 

“No, Kara. It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t be blaming you. I know that you have been through more than anyone should ever have to deal with. I just… I can’t lose you, Kara,” Alex said, wiping away tears angrily.

 

“I’m so sorry, zrhueiao,” Kara whispered, bringing Alex’s hand to her mouth and kissing her knuckles gently. “I love you, and I want to live for you, I promise. I will try harder.”

 

They slept eventually, but it was fitful, and when Alex called in the next morning to say she was staying home, Kara didn’t object. They curled up on the couch together and watched Disney movies, hiding from the world, wrapped up in each other.

 

 

Kara tried to kill herself. Okay, maybe it hadn’t quite got that far. But she had intended to. She’d kissed Alex and told her she loved her, had let Alex leave for the DEO without saying anything, the whole time intending to end her life. Alex would have never had a chance to tell her all of the things that she had dreamed about telling her since they were parted such a long time ago.

 

She didn’t have the right to feel betrayed, she knew. But that was exactly how she felt, and while the cuddling was wonderful (the Disney movies slightly less so) Alex’s skin was itching. She just wanted to scream at Kara, shake her until she explained why she felt like this _now._ Alex understood the impulse from before. If she hadn’t known that Kara was likely alive, still out there somewhere, she might have taken the same path that Kara had tried.

 

It just didn’t make sense that it would happen now, when things were better. Cadmus was gone, Kara was safe. She’d even been reunited with her aunt. So what would make her feel like she had to do this now? Why didn’t she love Alex enough to want to stay?

 

Alex knew from her medical training that depression didn’t work that way, that suicidal ideation didn’t work that way, that PTSD didn’t work that way. She knew that in her head, but in her heart she was hurt because Kara would rather die than stay with her.

 

She decided that it was probably time she spoke to a therapist herself. Some things just weren’t meant to be handled alone, and just because she had been okay so far, didn’t mean that things would stay that way. And she couldn’t blame Kara for this. She remembered when she was a kid and one of her friends, Vickie Donahue, asked Alex to come to a religious service. A Catholic Mass, to be precise. Alex, daughter of two atheists, had been fascinated by all of the ritual and the words that the people chanted in unison, standing for a while, then kneeling, then sitting. But one thing that had stuck with her was the sermon given by the priest dude that morning.

 

“As you all know, a young man in our parish died tragically from suicide this week,” the priest began. He went on to say that it wasn’t that they weren’t sympathetic, but the church was clear. “If one gives in to despair, then that is an unforgiveable sin,” he had boomed, and people shifted uncomfortably in the too-hot church.

 

Alex had carried those words with her since that day. It was before Kara’s arrival, she wasn’t sure exactly how long before, but something about it had struck her as so profoundly unfair that she had never forgotten it. Alex was fairly empathetic, though she’d had to tamp that natural instinct down a lot since joining the DEO. But when she thought about how much pain it would take to override a human’s natural instinct to survive, she couldn’t understand how people could then judge that person for looking for a way out of it. Saying that it was selfish, or that it was the coward’s way out, or it was the last big “fuck you” from a person who didn’t care about the people around them. She only had Kara as an example of someone dealing with suicidal feelings, but it was clear to her that of all the things Kara was, selfish was not among them. She was simply in so much pain that she didn’t know what else to do.

 

Having thought things through a little, Alex found herself relaxing, a sleeping Kara burrowed into her side. It wasn’t Kara’s fault. Alex knew that, and while it didn’t feel real yet, she knew that it would, eventually. With that realisation, she kissed Kara’s hair and furtively changed the channel so she could watch CSI instead of Aladdin. Again.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara has some thoughts after her almost-suicide attempt, and she goes to see an old friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is such a short chapter, but I hope to have a new one up soon. Thank you all for reading.

* * *

Kara took a few more days to think, to process the madness that had taken her mind that morning. She’d felt the urge before, when her grief for Alex was choking her, but it had been different this time. Like an impulse that came from nowhere. She was frightened of it, because most of Kara wanted to stay here. After all, she’d spent time setting up failsafes for any steps that Lillian Luthor might have planned. Making plans to safeguard her future… that indicated a desire to have one, right? So why in Rao’s name had she been struck with this desire – no, this _need_ – to leave?

 

She thought about it a lot, but she also spent a lot of time at the DEO. They had a room for Astra to work out in, a room with a variable flow of kryptonite radiation, and when Kara’s mind began to race too much, she worked out, sparring with DEO agents, other aliens, her aunt, and a few times even Director Henshaw. J’onn Jonzz. He was immensely skilled, being centuries old, and while his strength couldn’t match hers under this yellow sun, in the de-power room that didn’t matter. On cloudy days she flew with her aunt or with the Martian, and she found that flying was the best way to use up her considerable reserves of energy.

 

On the fourth day after her abortive attempt, she made a sudden decision, and asked Astra if she would mind if they didn’t meet for their daily session of Torquasm-Rao. Astra was worried, but Kara explained where she was planning to go, and Astra acquiesced.

 

It had been over two years, but stepping into the elevator at Catco made Kara feel like she had never been away. The pushing to get in the elevator, the noisy bustle of the bullpen, and the sound of Cat’s voice yelling for Lexapro. Kara took a deep breath in, smiling at the familiar strident tones. She hadn’t worked at CatCo for long, but it was one of her fondest memories of her life ‘before’.

 

She made her way silently through the bullpen, side-stepping as people rushed back and forth, and she stopped at her old desk. It was empty, and Kara wondered where her replacement was. Or her replacement’s replacement, more likely.

 

“Linda?”

 

Miss Grant’s voice was low, disbelieving. Kara turned around, her heart thumping.

 

“Miss Grant,” she said, just about managing to meet the woman’s eyes with a small smile.

 

“You’re… you’re here?”

 

“Yes, Miss Grant,” Kara said, smiling a little more.

 

“Well, get in here. Sasha, bring me two lattes and cancel my afternoon! No interruptions!”

 

A harried-looking woman approached, muttering under her breath about her name being… Shove-awn? What kind of name was that? She nodded, however, staring at her feet, and Cat flicked a finger at her dismissively, showing Kara into her office and closing the doors behind them. She pressed a button that hadn’t been there before, and the doors and windows of the office went opaque. Then Kara felt herself being hugged, maybe more tightly than any human had ever held her, and to her surprise Cat Grant was crying into her shirt. Well, Alex’s shirt. Kara realised that she probably looked a lot different in her all-black garb, with the bags under her eyes and the dullness of her hair. Back before, she had made an effort to look happy, to seem peppy and ready to work as hard as Cat needed. She hugged Cat back, murmuring absently in Kryptonian, and after a few more minutes Cat stepped back, looking up at Kara with tears still in her eyes.

 

“Let me look at you, you big lug,” she said, trying to inject some of her usual insulting tone into the words, but failing miserably. It brought a smile to Kara’s lips. “You’re well?” Cat asked. “Are you… were you hurt?” Cat asked.

 

Kara heard her own voice screaming, smelled the scent of her own flesh burning as Lillian Luthor cut out her liver and cauterised the wound. She shook her head for a second, clearing away the images, the sounds, the smells.

 

“You could say that,” Kara said, quietly.

 

“But you’re okay now?” Cat asked, anxiously.

 

“I’m… recovering,” Kara said, softly. Just then, Shove-awn knocked at the door, and Kara automatically took the coffees from her as Cat turned away, hiding her tear-stained face from her assistant. Kara went to the bar, absently grabbing a sweetener for Cat and some sugar for her, stirring them in and going to sit opposite Cat on the huge sofa. It felt like being at home, somehow, and she felt something inside of her relax, quieten down, in a way that she hadn’t since she was rescued from Cadmus.

 

“I tried to find you. I set Witt to the task. He’s the Toyman’s son, you know. He hacked someone, though – the wrong person – and he disappeared, too. I… I was too frightened, for my sons, then, and I let it slide,” Cat said.

 

“It’s not your fault, Cat. And Winn is fine; I saw him a week ago or so. He asked me to come see you,” Kara said.

 

“That’s… thank you, Linda. I’m glad to hear it. He was a good boy; he didn’t deserve to be put in prison for something I asked him to do,” Cat said, and Kara was sad to see that some of her spark was missing.

 

“He wasn’t put in prison, Cat. He’s working for a government agency. He seemed happy when I talked to him last,” Kara said. Cat breathed a sigh of relief.

 

“So, is it okay if I ask where you went?” Cat asked.

 

Kara shifted uncomfortably, hand moving to her left eye. She rubbed at it, and found that she was crying. She was so tired of crying.

 

“I can’t tell you much. I was abducted and kept somewhere for around two years. Towards the end, I was tortured. And then I was rescued by the government, along with some family that I thought I’d lost. I am still recovering, Miss Grant. I am so sorry I wasn’t here. I am sorry you had to worry about me,” Kara said, fidgeting with her glasses.

 

“Oh, Linda. I… I felt responsible, when you were gone. I thought I’d scared you away, and I sent Wilbur to your address and all of your stuff was there. And then I did some research, and I realised that your ID was falsified, that you hadn’t existed until a few years before you came to CatCo. I tried to find you, but… the police wouldn’t do anything, and I… when Winifred disappeared, I was frightened that they would take Carter next,” Cat said, wringing her hands.

 

“Please, Cat. Please don’t blame yourself. These people… they were looking for me long before I moved to National City; long before I worked for you,” Kara said, moving to the opposite couch to sit at Cat’s side. “I think… they were always going to find me. And they did. I’m sorry you got caught up in any of it.”

 

“And what about now?” Cat asked, quietly. “Are you safe now, Linda?”

 

“I’m safe,” Kara said, considering. “Or as safe as someone like me gets to be. And… my name isn’t Linda. My name is Kara Danvers, and I’m sorry I had to lie to you.”

 

Cat looked at her searchingly before nodding. She took a sip from her latte as she considered something.

 

“You said your family found you? How did that come about?” Cat asked.

 

“I can’t tell you much, Miss Grant. And I trust none of this will end up in CatCo magazine or the Tribune?” Kara asked, with a small smile.

 

“We’re just two friends talking, Kara. I would never publish anything about you without your consent. I’m just glad you’re okay,” Cat reassured.

 

“Okay,” Kara said. “I was rescued by a government agency. But I was imprisoned by some people who also… they imprisoned a man I care about, my foster father, I suppose? He was there while I was… in that place, and he helped make sure I stayed alive. A few days before I was rescued, he escaped. He is the reason I am sitting here. He crawled out into the desert and he… he could have died, so easily. But he got away and he found help. My aunt and my... - my soulmate, they came to rescue me. I almost died, still, from what they did to me. But I had a lot of help,” Kara said. It was making her tremble, even telling the story in such vague detail.

 

“And your aunt? She… how did she get involved with this government agency? And your soulmate?” Cat asked, delicately.

“My aunt was trying to help people. To make up for things she did wrong, before,” Kara said. “But my soulmate, she joined the government to try to find me. She worked so hard, Cat, and I came back all wrong. I don’t know how to make… how to make it all right,” Kara said, swallowing.

 

“Kara, darling. Your soulmate is your soulmate for a reason. You are the perfect match to one another, and she will support you as you support her. If soulmarks have taught us anything, it’s that there is more to this world – to this universe – than we knew, before. So you can depend on that, Kara. Whoever your soulmate is… she is your soulmate for a reason, just as you are hers. Don’t lose faith in that,” Cat said, her voice stronger than before.

 

“I… thank you, Miss Grant. You always know just what to say,” Kara said, smiling a little through tears.

 

“I have been known to have a way with words,” Cat said, smiling a little smugly. “You know, I… I want to ask you about all of this, about why it happened, Kara. But I can tell you’re not ready, or maybe able, to share that with me. So I want you to know that if you ever want to talk to someone about this, just as a friend, then I’m here. Okay? Assuming you’re not going to be disappearing again, that is,” Cat said, sounding a little anxious at the end.

 

“I haven’t got any plans to go anywhere, Miss Grant. I promise,” Kara said.

 

“Good,” Cat said, suddenly looking a lot more like her old self. “Now, I don’t know what to do about your job,” she said, tapping a finger on her cheek reflexively.”

 

“Oh, no, Miss Grant,” Kara said, shaking her head. “That’s not why I came here. I came here to explain to you what… why I wasn’t here,” Kara said.

 

“Nonsense, Kara. I want you to come back. If that’s something you want, of course,” Cat said.

 

“I… I don’t know, Miss Grant. I’m still recovering. I haven’t been myself,” Kara said, voice small.

 

“The only way out is through,” Cat said, and Kara looked at her in confusion.

 

“Sometimes, the best way to get through something traumatic… is to act as if you are okay. To carry on, to go back to what you do best. I’m not saying it’s always the way, but for some people it helps. It always helped me, anyway,” Cat said, shrugging with one shoulder in that delicate way of hers. “In any case, if it makes it worse, then you get your marching orders, and you go back to being a lady of leisure. No harm, no foul.”

 

Kara stared at Cat. Was she really offering to give Kara a job just to help her get through a difficult time?

 

“You know, even to this day, I’ve never had an assistant half as good as you. This one, Schubert, she’s competent enough but she has that whiff of tragic desperation about her. She would cut my throat and stake me out for the crows in a heartbeat if it got her what she wanted,” Cat said, waving her arm dismissively. “She’s like that character from House… cutthroat bitch, remember?”

 

Kara laughed out loud, and she realised that it had been a long time since she’d laughed like this. Laughing at something as silly as a nickname and a reference to a tv show she watched once. It felt freeing.

 

“If you are willing, Kara, I would be more than happy for you to work for me again. You could start out slow, doing some of the minor assistant duties. And then we can talk about maybe giving you some editing responsibility. All on flexible terms, and I won’t put pressure on you. Unless and until you’re ready for it,” Cat said.

 

“Why?” Kara asked, bluntly. “I only worked for you for… what? A few months? I can’t have made that much of an impression on you.”

 

“You did, Kara. You’re the first assistant I had who did every task I set for them. You never wavered, never gave anything but your best, and never took any notice of a damn thing I said to you. I had plans for you, Kara. I had picked you out as someone to watch. And then you went and disappeared, of all things. So now that you’re back, I want to see if I was right about you. I never waste talent, Kara. That’s the one thing I never, ever do,” Cat said, and she was completely serious and sincere.

 

“Thank you, Miss Grant,” Kara said, touched.

 

“No need to thank me. Just come back to work. That’s all the thanks I need,” Cat said.

 

“Okay,” Kara agreed. She really did feel better, more at home. Maybe this was exactly what she needed.

 

“Oh, and Kara? Black doesn’t look bad on you, I’ll admit. But I am expecting you to abduct me in a Blackhawk any second now,” Cat joked.

 

“Oh, I don’t need a Blackhawk,” Kara said, unthinking. She blushed, then.

 

“Be that as it may, Kara. Office attire, please, when you come back. I’ll have a company card sent to you for a new wardrobe. Will you give me your new address?” Cat asked, and Kara realised that she didn’t know it. She asked Cat to wait and called Alex, asking for their address, and she wrote it down on a notepad that Cat passed to her.

 

“Sorry,” Kara said, after hanging up. “I haven’t lived here long, and I usually get a ride there and back. I never had to pay much attention,” she shrugged. Cat looked at her a little oddly, and Kara wondered just how uninterested a person had to be to not know their own address. It probably looked a little strange.

 

“So. Come back when you’re ready, and we’ll start out slow. Do you think you could do Monday?” Cat asked.

 

“I… yes. I think I should be able to do that,” Kara confirmed. She had no plans, but that didn’t mean anything. If Lena’s prediction came true, she might have to fight the leftovers at Cadmus at some point. “Miss Grant, there are some… loose ends, I suppose, from my… abduction. So it might be that I need to go away for a little while. Not, like, two years, but… if I disappear, please… don’t worry, okay?” Kara said.

 

“Okay, Kara,” Cat said, taking off her glasses and looking at Kara with something that looked like fondness in her eyes. “If you can, tell me before you disappear again, okay? But if not, I’ll try not to worry. And if there’s anything I can help with, for you or the agency who helped you, please… tell me. I’m grateful to them, whoever they are, for saving you. And that gives them a free pass on me reporting anything about them – for now, anyway,” Cat continued.

 

“Thank you, Miss Grant,” Kara said, smiling at her former – well, now current employer.

 

“You’re most welcome, Kara Danvers. Welcome back,” Cat said, and then she stood, pulling Kara up and into a hug. Kara returned it wholeheartedly.

 

She felt better that day as she headed to the DEO to see Dr Calder than she had since she came back. More normal. More herself; or who she used to be. Before.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex finds out how Kara's reunion with Cat went, and they take the next step in their relationship

* * *

Alex was concerned when she saw the obvious signs that Kara had been crying. She was tempted to go to her, to check on her before her session with Dr Calder, but Astra was at the DEO and she shook her head at Alex, turning to head towards her.

 

“What’s wrong?” Alex asked, bluntly, as Astra got close.

 

“She went to see her old employer. Cat? I do not know what happened, but I followed her there and listened to them from outside for a short time before I left to give them privacy. They were simply two people reuniting. There were a lot of tears.”

 

“Jesus. I didn’t think Cat Grant could cry,” Alex said, shaking her head.

 

“Why? Does she not possess lacrimal glands?” Astra asked.

 

Alex snorted, and Astra shot her a filthy look.

 

“I struggle with your idioms, human, but I speak 18 other languages fluently. You might want to remember that the next time you wish to mock me,” Astra said, glowering.

 

“Oh, shut it, Astra. You’re a pain in my ass.”

 

“And you are a pain in my ass too, Alexandra,” Astra said, nodding as if that settled everything. Alex chuckled and went back to her paperwork.

 

Kara returned a while later, eyes still red, but beaming.  Alex’s heart caught at the sight. She couldn’t recall seeing a smile like that on Kara’s face since they were kids.

 

“Hey, honey,” Alex said, as Kara approached her, kissing her cheek gently.

 

“Hey,” Kara said. She stayed there for a moment, in the circle of Alex’s arms, and she sighed gently.

 

“Had a good day?” Alex asked.

 

“Yes. So much, yes.”

 

“Cool. Why don’t we head home? We’ll order some food, and you can tell me all about it,” Alex said.

 

Kara bounced on her toes for a moment. It made Alex smile, because that? She definitely hadn’t seen for a number of years.

 

They ordered food, and Alex watched patiently as Kara demolished enough Italian food to feed half of the DEO.

 

“So, do you want to tell me about it?” Alex asked.

 

“Sure,” Kara said. She smiled, and something about her smile was different. As if she were serene, rather than simply happy.

 

“I went to see Ms Grant. It just… it seemed like it was time. I needed time to recover from everything that happened, but I think I just let it go on a little too long. She offered me a job, Alex.”

 

“Wow. Like, your old job? As her assistant?”

 

“No, or at least not right away. She has an assistant. Obviously she had to replace me eventually. I’m just kind of amazed that she even remembered me. She said all this nice stuff about how she doesn’t waste potential, and she sees a lot of it in me. She wants me to start small. She said that sometimes the only way out is through, and that she has used work sometimes to deal with other things in her life that aren’t going well. I mean, it makes sense in some ways. Not that I want to avoid what happened – I know I need to do my best to deal with it all, but I feel like some sort of normality in my life couldn’t be a bad thing, you know?”

 

Alex nodded.

 

“I’m a little relieved, I have to say. I would imagine that working as her assistant is stressful, but it sounds like you’re both being pretty sensible about it all,” Alex said, dipping her arancini in extra marinara sauce.

 

“Yeah. I didn’t go back there for a job, I really didn’t. But when she offered it, once I was past the shock, I realised it could be really good for me. To be somewhere where I felt normal, doing something as normal and human as working in an office,” Kara said. She looked calm and optimistic and much happier than she had for a long time.

 

“Then I’m really pleased for you, Kara Zor-El. If it helps you, then I’m 100% for it. If you need me at any time, though, you call, okay? I can be there in a few minutes.”

 

Kara nodded.

 

They snuggled up together on the couch watching a documentary about sloths, and Kara fell asleep with her head in Alex’s lap not long after. Alex had seen the signs often enough that she had already prepared. She had a book on the table next to her and a few beers in a cooler, too, so she let her Kryptonian sleep and she enjoyed a few chapters of zombies and viral outbreaks and beer. She felt as if Kara’s contentment were contagious, because she felt comfortable and safe, too. She sent out silent thanks to Cat Grant for giving her a night of relative peace in the midst of the madness that was their life.

 

The following day, a courier delivered a credit card for Kara, with instructions to go and see a personal shopper at an exclusive boutique in the city.

 

“Rao, Alex. I think she’s really buying me a whole new wardrobe,” Kara said, eyes wide.

 

“She really did miss you, didn’t she?” Alex said wryly.

 

“It looks that way. But I have no idea what I did to deserve it,” Kara said, running her fingers up and down the gold lettering on the black card.

 

“You never notice, Kara, but you make people feel better. You make people happy, whether you’re trying or not. And I’m pretty sure your powers helped you achieve some of her more difficult requests,” Alex suggested.

 

“I didn’t use them very much – I was still trying to stay under the radar, to stay away from Cadmus. But maybe I did a few times? I don’t know. I’m really glad she remembered me though. The time I worked there… it was great. I loved it. And Miss Grant – well, she was never particularly kind, but she gave credit where credit was due, and she never pushed me too far.”

 

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Alex sipping her coffee, before Kara brought up the question she’d been dreading.

 

“So, do you want to come shopping with me?”

  
Alex groaned.

 

***

 

The boutique that Cat picked out was the fanciest thing Kara had seen in ages. The woman – Marcy – who was her ‘personal shopper’ kept coming at her with beautiful fabrics and colours and it suddenly awakened something in Kara. Since everything with Cadmus she had been indifferent to how she looked, what she wore, and even where she lived. But this little place, with the tiny woman and her beautiful fabrics – it made Kara feel some sort of happy. She tried what must have been 30 different outfits on for an increasingly impatient Alex, who nevertheless smiled and gave the thumbs up to those she really liked.

 

When she was done with measuring and looking Kara up and down critically, Marcy told her to expect half the outfits tomorrow and the rest by Tuesday. Kara nodded, handing her the card Miss Grant had provided, and nearly fainted when she saw the total. She said nothing, however, and left after thanking the woman.

 

When they were out of the building and well out of earshot, Kara started bouncing up and down on her toes.

 

“Rao, Alex! Did you see how much they cost? Why would she do that? Why would she spend so much on someone she barely knows?” Kara asked, smiling and concerned all at once.

 

“I think it’s possible that Cat has intentions for you, Kara. Other than being her assistant, that is. She said she didn’t like to waste potential, so she obviously sees something special in you,” Alex suggested.

 

“Special like what? Like my powers?” Kara asked.

 

“Special like someone who might have the potential to run her company for her when she retires,” Alex said, delicately.

 

“No. You don’t think that, do you?” Kara asked incredulously.

 

“Look, Kara. I love you, so I’m biased. But you can do anything on this Earth that you put your mind to. There are supercomputers out there which couldn’t match the processing power you have in your genetically perfect brain. If I had a company and I was looking for someone to take over said company, I would choose you to run it in a heartbeat. And not because you’re Kryptonian, either. Because Astra would be the worst CEO in history. I would pick you because you work hard and you care. So if that is what Cat is thinking, I think I see why she’s the Queen of all Media.”

 

Kara smiled at her brightly, and Alex leaned over to kiss her.

 

As she did so, some dudebro catcalled them, and Alex tensed.

 

Kara took a deep breath, pressing the button on her bracelet before standing up to her full height and turning to face the man who had shouted at them.

 

“I’m sorry, sir. Were you talking to me and my soulmate just now?” she asked, approaching him with a quirked eyebrow.

 

The young man was with his friends, who were urging him on.

 

“Yeah, so?” he said, laughing as his friends laughed.

 

“It’s nothing. I was just wondering why, when you see two people so much in love, you would feel like it was necessary to shout something so vulgar at them. Did it make you feel better about yourself? You know, you should all take a good look. This woman is going to be my wife, and we get to spend our lives together. I doubt any of you idiots will find anyone to love you if this is the sort of thing you enjoy doing. You should be ashamed. I know you aren’t, but I hope someday you’ll look back on this and realise how much of an asshole you are.”

 

Kara turned on her heel, marching away, and the guys started to laugh nervously. Alex undid the zipper on her jacket, making her badge and gun visible.

 

“I suggest you gentlemen find yourselves somewhere else to spend the day before I call in my people and have you locked up in a black site until you die,” she growled.

 

They disappeared so quickly that Kara was impressed. Alex caught up with her a minute later.

 

“Thank you,” Kara said.

 

“For what?” Alex asked. “You’re the one who confronted them and who somehow managed not to melt their faces with your heat vision. I just made vague threats.”

 

“Thank you for trusting me not to hurt them. You could have pulled me away, could have stepped in front of me, could have done anything but let me talk to them. But you trusted me. I can’t thank you enough.”

 

“You’re welcome, love. I will always trust you. And if you do ever accidentally melt some fratboy’s face, I will clean up the mess, no questions asked.”

 

Kara smiled, and it was one of those smiles that could have rivalled the sun for sheer radiance.

 

When they got home, Alex asked if Kara would like to go and see Lena and Al’eara and perhaps Winn, to have some food together and watch a movie. Kara agreed, dancing on her toes again, and Alex went to make the arrangements.

 

Kara was a little overwhelmed, both by the kindness of Cat’s offer (and the new wardrobe) and the fun she’d had that day with Alex. Even the homophobic assholes hadn’t been able to put a dent in her mood. She decided to pray for a little while, to thank Rao for giving her this day, for reminding her that life could be sweet, too. She let herself rest for a little while, eyes closed, remembering how Rao’s light had felt on her skin, so different to Earth’s sun. She hoped that Rao was still looking after her and Kal and Astra, the last 3 remaining Kryptonians, and that he hadn’t died with their world.

 

They had a fun evening with Winn and Lena and Al’eara. Despite the latter’s very alien looks, she was well-versed in Earth culture, and she even beat Winn when it came to Star Wars trivia. Kara hadn’t had a feeling like this for some time, like she belonged in a group without question, that she wasn’t the odd one out, the stranger not of this world. The last time she’d felt this kind of easy camaraderie, it was probably when she was on Krypton, with her aunts and uncles and mom and dad. Rao, she missed them all so much.

 

Al’eara offered her some rum a little later, something that she swore should even work for a Kryptonian on Earth. She mixed it up with something sweet, and Kara had a small sip, and then some more. A little while later she started to feel floaty, and she noticed Lena’s eyes on her, knowing and amused.

 

She didn’t understand why until Alex had practically carried her into their apartment later, because suddenly Kara was almost completely sober, and at the same time she was so incredibly aroused that she didn’t know what do with her hands. She felt like her skin was on fire, like every innocent touch from Alex was just fanning the flames. She managed to wait until they were inside the apartment before she spun them round, pinning Alex to the door. She kissed her surprised soulmate, probing into Alex’s mouth with her tongue, and Alex made a loud moaning noise in the back of her throat.

 

“Hey, baby. Hold on, will you? You’re drunk, and I don’t want to take advantage,” Alex said, drawing back a little.

  
“I’m not really drunk anymore, Alex. And I really want this, love. Please. I love you. They’ve taken so much from us already. I want this, with you, and I don’t want to wait anymore,” Kara said, pleading.

 

Alex looked at her pupils, ever the scientist.

 

“Are you sure, Kara? You were pretty wasted, before,” Alex said doubtfully.

 

“Yes, I’m sure,” Kara said. “I’m not drunk, not anymore, and I want to be with you, Alex. Please. Unless you don’t want to, in which case of course we won’t, because I’m all about consent,” Kara said, beginning to ramble, and backing away.

 

“No, Kara. Come here,” Alex said, pulling Kara back to her and slamming Kara, this time, into the door. She kissed Kara with a fervour that made her breathless.

 

They half-walked, half-stumbled to the bed, shedding clothes on the way, and Kara felt like another part of her was waking up. Her libido, so long ignored and denied, was roaring back to life, and now she had Alex in her arms, she wasn’t going to give up on this chance.

 

They fell into bed, fell into each other, and Kara was stunned by the abandon with which they went at each other. It was a little desperate for lovemaking, for their first time, but it was what it needed to be. They touched each other, and while Alex clearly had some experience, but it didn’t matter to Kara, because whoever had gone before didn’t matter to either of them. They were only placeholders, only a way for Alex to scratch an itch.

 

The wonder of feeling an orgasm surging through her body with Alex’s fingers inside her, with her hand buried inside Alex – it was almost spiritual, and Kara cried with the joy of it more than once that evening. They came together again and again, because once they started it was hard to stop, this desperate need to want to be near each other, to draw those sounds from each other again, to look into one another’s eyes as they came. It was nothing short of sublime, and when they took a long enough break for Kara to catch her breath, she asked Alex if it had ever been like that for her, before.

 

Alex shook her head right away, looking thoughtful.

 

“I tried once, with this guy, and that was the worst time. It was bordering on painful, and there was no foreplay for me. From what I hear from straight women I know, that’s pretty much normal for straight guys. And there were a couple of girls over time, and they were… fun. No pain, an easy orgasm, good kissing. But they were interchangeable, the women I slept with. None of it felt like this, like… like I’m inside you, but not physically. I mean emotionally, or maybe spiritually. It’s like… I can feel your heart beat like it’s in my chest,” Alex said, before reddening.

 

“Alex, that’s the most beautiful thing I think I’ve ever heard you say. I love you so much. I know we haven’t talked about it much, but I would like it… I want you to become my bondmate, to go through the ceremony that Eliza found. Will you think about it?” Kara asked.

 

“Of course, Kara,” Alex said, her smile small and sweet.

 

They slept wrapped together, limbs tangled, sweaty and satisfied.

 

In the morning, Alex told Kara that she wanted to be married.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara's first day at CatCo

* * *

 

Kara dressed carefully for work on Monday morning. She chose a tight-fitting sleeveless dress along with small matching heels, because while Cat had never said anything about it, Kara knew she hated it when people towered over her. Alex helped her get her hair into a neat updo, and her glasses completed the picture.

 

“You look amazing,” Alex breathed, staring.

 

“Thank you, love,” Kara said, turning to check the back of the dress and wondering, once again, why Cat Grant would go to so much trouble and expense to bring her back to CatCo.

 

“You’re going to do great, Kar. Whatever you put your mind to, you can do it. You could work in NASA or become a brain surgeon or cure cancer. Working at CatCo is nothing in comparison,” Alex said, stepping up behind her and kissing her on the back of the neck delicately. It made Kara’s hairs stand on end. She turned in Alex’s arms, kissing her soulmate soundly, and drew back reluctantly only when they both began to moan into each other’s mouths.

 

“Why did I have to start work today, after the world’s most perfect weekend?” Kara asked, mournfully. “I could happily stay here with you for a week, Alex Danvers, just ravishing you over and over, with occasional breaks for food.”

 

Alex shuddered in her arms and her head dropped to Kara’s shoulder.

 

“Don’t say things like that, or you’re going to be fired on your first day,” Alex murmured, breath catching in her chest. “And don’t bite me there or I swear to Rao you’re not leaving this apartment today.”

 

Kara smiled at her soulmate, a little smug. Their weekend together had given her confidence she didn’t know she possessed. She knew exactly how and where to touch Alex to make her shudder and cry out, and it was a heady power to possess. Of course, Alex knew the same about her, but it wasn’t about that, it was about how good she could make Alex feel, and it made her feel powerful in a way that even the yellow sun couldn’t manage.

 

“Come on, Stargirl. We need to get you to work. Can’t be late on your first day,” Alex said.

 

Kara nodded, and a few minutes later they were weaving through early morning traffic in Alex’s black SUV. Alex dropped her outside Noonan’s, the coffee shop she used to frequent every day before work, and wished Kara good luck before kissing her gently.

 

“I’ll call you at lunch,” Kara promised. Alex nodded.

 

“Don’t forget your bracelet if you get overwhelmed, okay? I’m only a few minutes away if you need me.”

 

Kara smiled widely.

 

“I’ll be fine, _:zrhueiao_. But of course, I’ll call you if I need you.”

 

Kara ordered her old favourite, a pumpkin spice latte, and she absently ordered Ms Grant’s latte, too. She was halfway upstairs in the elevator when she realised what she’d done, and she chuckled to herself. A tall, bald man smiled at her.

 

“First day?” he asked, face open and friendly. 

 

“Yeah. Well, second first day, officially,” Kara said, managing to balance both coffee cups so she could offer her hand to the smiling man. “I’m Kara Danvers.”

 

“I’m James. James Olsen, Art Director. I’m pretty new, too.”

 

“Oh, wow. You’re Jimmy Olsen, with the Pulitzer Prize for taking pictures of my… of Superman?! I can’t believe you’re here? What lured you away from the Daily Planet?” Kara asked, eyes wide.

 

The elevator door dinged and James walked with her towards her desk. Or rather, towards Cat’s office, since Kara wasn’t even sure she had a desk yet.

 

“Cat, actually. She came to see Lois, I think, and she offered me a job in passing if I wanted. The Art Director at the Planet – she’s a legend, so there was nowhere for me to go, and I’d been getting restless. It seemed like a good time,” James shrugged.

 

“Wow. So you do you actually know him, then? Superman, I mean,” Kara said, blinking.

 

“Yes. I met him after he came out, I guess you might call it? And we’ve been friends since. He even gave me this,” James said, lifting his arm and showing her a watch with the crest of El on it. His finger seemed to slip, then, and he pressed a button on the watch for a split second. A high-pitched noise nearly knocked Kara off her feet, and she staggered, wincing. James stared at her.

 

“Oh, shit. My bad. I didn’t realise… he told me he had a cousin, but I had no idea you would be here, at CatCo,” James said, in a low voice. He tapped out a quick text. “I’m just letting him know it was an accident. I’m really sorry, Kara.”

 

Kara took a deep breath, wincing as the pain in her head dissipated.

 

“It’s fine, James. I just didn’t know he’d mentioned me to anyone. I haven’t seen him since… Actually, I don’t think I’ve seen him since I landed.”

 

“Oh. I didn’t realise that,” James said, frowning. “He never mentioned that. He told me he’d found you a good family to stay with, and that you were safe.”

 

Kara snorted in derision.

 

“I’m afraid neither of those things are entirely true, but if it makes Kal feel better, so be it. I’m sorry, James. I should get going – don’t want to give Miss Grant a bad impression on my first day.”

 

“Sure, Kara. Maybe we could have coffee sometime? I could always use a friend,” he said, in his soft, easy way.

 

“Sure. I’d like that,” Kara said, with an uneasy smile. She was fairly sure his ‘slip’ of the hand in pressing his Superman button was no accident, and that he knew exactly who she was. She didn’t like to be lied to, but she’d give him the benefit of the doubt just this once.

 

Kara reached Miss Grant’s office. Her assistant, Siobhan, (how did anyone even say that name?) wasn’t there, and Cat was on the phone. Kara halted, wondering what to do, but then Cat was summoning her in to the office, so she opened the door carefully, still balancing her coffee cups.

 

She put Cat’s coffee in front of her, and Cat breathed a sigh of relief. But then she sighed, again, as if it wasn’t what she’d wanted, and Kara remembered that Cat liked her coffee the temperature of the sun. Kara picked up the cup, lifting the lid, and gave it a blast of heat vision, making no effort to hide it from Cat at all, while still hiding it from the rest of the office. She stirred the drink and replaced the lid, putting it in front of Cat, who was looking at her with narrowed eyes while still listening to whomever was on the other end of the phone. Cat took a cautious sip of the coffee and sighed, a deep, satisfied sigh this time. Kara smiled and sat down on one of the couches, taking a sip of her pumpkin latte and sighing in satisfaction.

 

Cat’s telephone call took another few minutes, allowing Kara to calm herself and find her centre. She thanked Rao for sending her Aunt Astra to her and teaching her the Kryptonian disciplines, to allow her to calm herself in situations like this.

 

“So, Miss Danvers. You clean up well. I see Marcy has done her usual good work on you,” Cat said, as she hung up.

 

Kara looked up, smiling.

 

“She did a great job, Miss Grant. Thank you for what you…”

 

Cat waved a hand in dismissal.

 

“Never mind that, Kara. It was the least I could do. Now, did you have a restful weekend? Are you ready to be here? Because I can wait until you’re ready. Trauma is not to be trifled with.”

 

Her eyes were sympathetic and concerned, and something warmed in Kara’s chest at the sight.

 

“Thank you, Miss Grant. I had a wonderful weekend, actually, and I don’t think I could be more ready. Your confidence in me… you’ve boosted my confidence and reminded me of who I was, before. I can’t thank you enough for that,” Kara said, eyes on Cat’s.

 

“Good. But remember, all I’m doing is reminding you, Kara. The power is your own,” Cat said. “Thank you for the coffee. I did wonder how you managed to deliver it so hot. One mystery solved, I suppose.”

 

“I don’t want to ask, because I do trust you, but… this will stay between us, won’t it?” Kara said, pushing her glasses up.

 

“You should always make sure, Kara. People aren’t always what they seem. In this case, however, you are correct. Your secrets are safe with me, and if you ever need any help or want to talk about using any of these powers of yours, you can always talk to me about it.”

 

“Thank you, Miss Grant.”

 

“And call me Cat,” she said, pulling out a phone and a tablet from her drawer, still in their boxes. “I’ve had these set up for you, the passwords are included in the box for each device. Let’s go find your office.”

 

Kara stood, a little lost. Her _office?_ When did that happen?

 

She followed Cat as the smaller woman swished her way through the office, and was both pleasantly surprised and a little intimidated by all of the stares following them both. She had no idea what Cat had in store for her, but she was beginning to wonder if she should be doing this at all. If Cadmus found her, she’d be putting everyone at risk. But if J’onn had okayed it, it should be fine, right? That meant she was being protected in some way.

 

Cat opened a non-descript door in the middle of a non-descript corridor, where there was a bank of televisions on one wall very much like her own office, a small couch and coffee table in the middle, and a desk with a small balcony behind it.

 

“This is yours, for now. You can order a few things from building management – pictures and such – if you like, just nothing too flashy. I want you flying under the radar for now. Get yourself up to speed with IT – your computer, tablet, phone – and then come join me for lunch. We’ll be meeting a few of the editorial team.”

 

“Miss Grant… I mean, Cat. What have you got planned?” Kara asked, smiling.

 

“That’s for me to know, Kara, and for you to find out,” Cat said, smiling as she left the room, closing the door behind her. Kara looked around the office, surprised that an office like this wasn’t used for one of the VPs or the Board. She definitely hadn’t earned this. But something told her that she was going to.

 

Setting up her computer and other devices was fairly easy and she was ready before lunchtime, so she took a walk around the floor, taking note of where each department was, and checking to see if she recognised anyone still working there. The only one she did recognise was a red-headed man called Dave, who Kara had had to move on any number of occasions because his hair was ‘distracting’ Cat. It was rather a vibrant shade, but Kara liked it. There were only a handful of redheads on Krypton before the end. It was nice to see the trait hadn’t died out yet on Earth.

 

She was standing outside Cat’s office at exactly one minute before she was due, but Siobhan accosted her to say that Cat was busy.

 

“I’m sorry. She told me to meet her for lunch,” Kara said, face politely blank. “I can wait here, if you’d rather?”

 

Siobhan looked from Kara to Miss Grant, as if measuring the consequences of any given action, and decided on letting Kara through. She was gritting her teeth the whole time, though. Kara felt a little sorry for her. Being Cat’s assistant was no picnic, but it was very clear that Siobhan’s intentions were anything but good. She wasn’t there to do a good job, she was there to get ahead, and as a result, she never would – that wasn’t the kind of behaviour that Cat rewarded.

 

“Kara. Good, you’re ready. Let’s go. Showband, is my driver ready?” Cat yelled.

 

“He is, Miss Grant,” Siobhan said, eyes on her feet.

 

“Good. You can go,” she said dismissively, wiggling her fingers at Siobhan. Kara felt sorry for the girl again, but said nothing.

 

Cat walked past Kara to her private elevator, and Kara was stunned when she gestured for Kara to get in with her.

 

“What? You know I only have a private elevator so I don’t catch anything from these disease-ridden minions of mine. You were never sick; that was one of the best things about you,” Cat said, flippantly.

 

Kara suddenly saw a green-tipped scalpel digging into her side, surgically-gloved hands pulling back the skin and flesh, pushing through the muscle layer, and she had to take a deep breath, then another.

 

“You are seeing someone, aren’t you?” Cat asked, as she watched Kara anxiously.

 

“I am,” Kara said, and she was proud of how steady her voice was. “It’s getting better every day, but every now and then something just… triggers it off.”

 

“Was it me saying you were never sick?”

 

Kara nodded.

 

“You weren’t to know, Cat. The fact is, I am never sick, so when I think of being ill, of being in pain, I think of that place. I have… exercises… that help. But it’s not going to be cured overnight, so if this is going to be a problem, I understand. You need someone you can depend on.” Kara said, eyes on her shoes.

 

“Rubbish. It will be fine, Kara. You’re doing well, and if anyone in my company has a problem with a young woman bravely dealing with PTSD, then they will have me to answer to. If at any point it becomes too much for you, you let me know, though?”

 

Kara nodded, meeting Cat’s eyes squarely.

 

The lunch was slightly boring, because Kara wasn’t up to date with everything that was happening in the country and across the world, but each of the people who were on the senior editorial staff were interesting and smart, and she decided to take some time to learn about each one of them and their backgrounds. It could never hurt to know the details of people’s lives when you were working with them – Kara had always found that a little extra care smoothed things over when there was trouble between colleagues.

 

They were all clearly interested in why Kara was there, and Cat didn’t give them anything much to go on, except that Kara was an ex-employee re-joining the company, who was going to be learning the ropes. The head of the CatCo magazine investigative team, the aptly named Snapper Carr, just glared at her when she was introduced. It made her smile wider, and she could have sworn that Cat giggled into her napkin at the sight. The others, Anthony Coleman, Alice McAndrews and another well-named person, an Amazon of a woman called Dana Strong, smiled and were polite and asked plenty of questions about Kara, most of which she dodged.

 

“So, what did you think of my team?” Cat asked, in that offhand way that meant that Kara’s answer was going to be extra-important, but she didn’t want her to know that.

 

“I thought they were a really talented bunch of people. Snapper is a piece of work, so I can only assume that he’s excellent at his job,” Kara mused.

 

“Go on,” Cat encouraged.

 

“Anthony doesn’t like you, at all. He disparages you with his body language and he didn’t smile genuinely once. If he’s not absolutely essential to the day-to-day running, I’d have someone review his department thoroughly. If he’s not cutting corners I’ll be amazed.”

 

“What makes you think that he would cut corners?”

 

“Nothing on its own. The way he almost told me to get him a napkin, how he let Dana pour his wine for him. And he was smug, like he knew something you didn’t. So he’s either getting away with something already, or he’s planning to. Of course that could all be complete garbage. But that’s what I see.”

 

Cat hummed quietly.

 

“And Alice?”

 

“Dependable, hard worker. I would say her biggest flaw is that when things go wrong she can’t handle the stress and instead of rallying her team, she fixes it all herself. I would say she needs close watching by a second in command who can manage her when she’s in that state so that she doesn’t burn out.”

 

“And Dana?”

 

“Sly. Smart. She has ambitions. She likes you, but she’s not sentimental. She won’t go out of her way to betray you, but she will do what it takes for her to get ahead. I bet her employees are terrified of her,” Kara said.

 

“And you’re 4 for 4,” Cat said, smiling smugly. “I knew you could read them.”

 

“It does help when you can hear someone’s heartbeat and pulse and measure their blood pressure,” Kara said wryly.

 

“Now, that’s just not fair, young lady. Do you know what I could have done with abilities like that when I was working at the Daily Planet? I could have started CatCo years earlier than I did.”

 

“Sorry, Cat. I didn’t ask for it. It’s in my genes,” Kara shrugged. Cat mock-glared at her.

 

“I think that’s been a good start, Kara. I want you to go home now, get some rest, and I’ll see you bright and early in the morning,” Cat said, as they arrived back at CatCo.

 

“But Cat… I’ve hardly done a thing!” Kara protested.

 

“You will, Kara. Believe me. I’m not going easy on you. I have a tentative training plan for you that could take 6 months or more, some of which will likely be overseas, so believe me when I say you’ll be earning your money. Now, unless you need to go to your office first, I’ll have Thomas take you home.”

 

“Sure,” Kara said, shrugging. “I have all of my stuff with me.”

 

“Good. Goodnight, Kara,” Cat said, getting out and throwing a brief smile back at her.

 

Thomas (who was actually called Trevor, Kara was sure) asked her for her address, which she remembered this time. When she got home she called Alex quickly, then sank into a hot bath before changing and sleeping on the couch. When Alex arrived home, she made passionate, ridiculously exuberant love to her, leaving Kara on the verge of tears. When Alex asked her why she was so happy, she couldn’t even explain it, she just shrugged. She felt like herself again, only more. They could never take who she was away, not forever, and that made Kara want to laugh and dance. Alex’s rolling eyes calmed her a little, but she was still jumping around so much by bedtime that Alex had to exercise considerable muscle power in making Kara come over and over again until she was tired enough to sleep. Kara smiled as she drifted off, hearing her soulmate grousing under her breath about “Bloody Kryptonians and their stamina”.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More CatCo shenanigans. A relatively short chapter, for which I apologise. We're closing in on the end though, now.

* * *

 

The next few weeks were a whirlwind for Kara. She spent time at CatCo offices in Paris, London, and Metropolis, getting to know the managing staff for each office. Cat still just smiled enigmatically when Kara asked what she was up to, or if anyone else asked her who Kara was. Kara, for her part, did her best to utilise all of her skills, Kryptonian or otherwise, to learn as much as she could from and for Cat. She uncovered a conspiracy at the London office to attempt to embezzle money, ending in 8 staff members being arrested. The money was recovered, however, and Cat smiled approvingly when she hung up the phone after her teleconference with her CFO.

 

“Well, Kara. It would seem that I made the right choice in re-hiring you. Because of your actions, CatCo has recovered £55 million. I am extremely rich but that would have taken a hell of a dent out of my profits for the year. I might even have had to close the London office.”

 

“Glad to have helped, Miss Grant,” Kara said, adjusting her glasses thoughtfully. In truth, without her super-hearing and x-ray vision she would have missed the conspiracy. Before everything happened with Cadmus, she might have held back on using her powers, but now she didn’t care about that. She was a Kryptonian on a strange planet and while she couldn’t use her powers openly, she could and would use them to help those she cared about. Which now included Cat Grant, whose inexplicable belief in her had raised her spirits and given her back a confidence she thought she’d lost forever.

 

“I don’t know what I did before you were here, Kara,” Cat said, tapping a lip with one finger.

 

“Probably lost a lot more money,” Kara said, winking.

 

“Brazen. That’s a new colour on you,” Cat said, eyes narrowing. “I don’t mind it.”

 

Kara grinned.

 

The next thing she uncovered was an attempt to unseat Cat from her own company by releasing her private emails to the press. Cat was unrepentant about the emails the press had published so far, since they only proved that she had a thing for Idris Elba and had invested in a failed musical. But Kara could tell she was worried. Who wouldn’t be? A person could never truly be sure that all of their emails were suitable for public consumption. Kara enlisted her new friend James along with Winn Schott (who was delighted to be added to her supersquad, as he insisted on calling it) to help her get the evidence she needed. In the midst of that particular investigation, she had dinner at Lena and Ale’ara’s place with Alex, and Lena proved to be an ally in more ways than one.

 

“You know, since my mother’s death, I inherited her fortune,” Lena said, thoughtfully. “I think I can help you with your board member problem.”

 

“Really?” Kara asked. “How so?”

 

“I will buy out as many shares as I can, and I’ll give them to you. With any luck, that’ll mean that, between you and Cat, you’ll have a controlling share of CatCo and you can oust any opposition yourself. It’ll mean that Cat can’t be forced to stand down.”

 

“That’s ridiculously generous, Lena. You can’t just… that could be millions of dollars,” Kara spluttered.

 

“I have billions of dollars, Kara. And almost unlimited psychic power of my own. I don’t need any of the money, and helping you and Cat Grant to oust a fat cat white man who wants to make CatCo into a typical misogynistic media empire would be my absolute honour.”

 

“Lena, I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” Kara said, hugging Lena tightly and kissing her on the cheek.

 

Ale’ara made a high-pitched sound of alarm, and Kara was forced to place her hands over her ears.

 

“What was that for?” she asked, as soon as she could move without her head ringing.

 

“You kissed my mate!” Ale’ara hissed, furious.

 

“Sweetheart,” Lena said, placing a calming hand on Ale’ara’s thorax. “Friends can kiss one another on the cheek. It is not a sign of anything sexual. And look, Alex is sitting right there, and she’s not angry that Kara kissed my cheek.”

 

That wasn’t strictly correct, Kara couldn’t help but notice. Alex wasn’t ‘sitting right there’. She was actually on the floor, rolling around in uncontrollable laughter.

 

“I beg your pardon, Ale’ara,” Kara said, bowing to the Leptiré. “I meant no offense. I love Lena very much, but in a platonic way. As friends only. Perhaps in another universe we are in love, but in this one, I love Alex with all my soul. And even if I didn’t, I would never, ever interfere with a soul bond.”

 

Ale’ara subsided, finally, allowing her wings to furl into the back of her body, and she blinked several times, slowly.

 

“Your pardon, Kara Zor-El. My love for Lena is deep. I approach my mating time, and I am more aggressive when I reach that time.”

 

“No apology necessary,” Kara said, daring to reach out and touch Ale’ara’s forelimb gently. “I understand. If I believed anyone was threatening my Alex, I would rip them limb from limb.”

 

Ale’ara laughed at that, a hissing laugh that made Kara smile. They all sat down again, once Alex stopped laughing, and watched a movie in quite companionship.

 

The following day, Kara had a delivery at work from an armed courier. She was scanned by several devices and had to pass a voice recognition test before the courier would hand over his cargo. It was a document from an attorney confirming that Kara now owned 33% of CatCo. There was a handwritten note inside confirming that Lena was hard at work buying up the remainder of the stock that was for sale, but she thought this should help, since Cat owned more than 40% herself. Kara smiled ferally, returning to Cat’s side in the board meeting where Dirk Armstrong, the giant douche, was trying to persuade Cat that she should stand down for the good of the company.

 

Kara touched Cat’s arm gently, showing her the papers, and Cat grinned, for once looking very much like her namesake. She called the meeting to be adjourned until she had a chance to find out exactlywhat was in the emails that had the potential to embarrass her and CatCo, but Kara could tell from Cat’s tone and heartbeat that she was no longer frightened of what the board might do. As of now, only Kara and Cat’s decisions mattered.

 

“Do you want to explain to me where you just got the money to buy a third of my company, Kara?” Cat asked, drinking a Martini in one draught. They were in Noonan’s, in a corner far from anyone else.

 

“I have a friend with a lot of money. A friend who doesn’t give a tiny rat’s ass about the money, and who does care about me, and about CatCo and your legacy. I didn’t ask for her to do this, by the way. It was her suggestion,” Kara said.

 

“Yet again, the foresight I had in re-hiring you is proven,” Cat said, holding up a finger to the barman to bring her another martini.

 

“Yes, Cat. It’s really you who’s the genius saviour here,” Kara teased. She frowned, then, suddenly, as her earpiece crackled. Winn had provided it for when he and James managed to infiltrate Dirk Armstrong’s office.

 

“Hey guys, what’s happening?” Kara asked.

 

“Kara, I’ve sent James to Armstrong’s office. Can you watch him from where you are?” Winn asked.

 

Kara had memorised James’ heartbeat and Winn’s just for such an occasion. She homed in on the sound, finding him heading up to the top of a nearby building where Dirk’s office was situated. Kara watched carefully, noticing that Armstrong was on his way out of the building. She listened to Winn and James chatter over the earpiece, holding a hand up to ask Cat to wait, since she kept whispering demands to know what was going on.

 

Just then, she noticed that Dirk the Douche was returning on the elevator, and she alerted James immediately.

 

“He’s heading your way, James. You need to get out of there,” she said, starting to panic.

 

“I got this, Kara,” he said smoothly. She watched, impressed, as he sat on Dirk’s desk as if he owned the place, managing to convince the man that he was there to thrown in his lot with the rest of the board to take Cat down. Dirk shook his hand, and James left, getting into the elevator and sighing loudly.

 

“It’s done, guys. I think I got away with it.”

 

Kara looked over at Dirk’s office again, seeing the man talking away nonchalantly on the phone to someone about how Cat was going down. Kara snorted.

 

“He doesn’t seem to have any idea,” Kara confirmed. “Winn, do you have a link?”

 

“Working on it, Supergirl,” he said.

 

“Would you stop calling me that, Winnslow?” she said, pointedly.

 

“Sorry,” he said, sounding like he wasn’t remotely sorry. “My bad.”

 

Kara filled Cat in on what they had been doing.

 

“You’re doing all of this for me?” Cat asked. It looked like her eyes were filling.

 

“Of course,” Kara said. “You have no idea what you’ve done for me, Catherine Jane Grant. I would do anything to help you as long as I wasn’t hurting someone who didn’t deserve it.”

 

Cat sniffled a little, wiping at her nose with a napkin.

 

“Thank you, Kara,” she said, simply.

 

“Now we just have to prove that Dirk was behind the hack, and we can hopefully get control of the emails since they were illegally retrieved. Before anything too private comes out.”

 

Cat nodded, smiling.

 

“Thank you,” she said, again.

 

The following day they found an email of Cat’s that talked about a young man called Adam Foster. Kara asked Cat if she wanted to talk about it. It hadn’t been released yet by any media outlet, but she saw the look on Cat’s face when Kara found the email, and she knew immediately that whoever Adam Foster was, he was very important to Cat.

 

“He’s my son,” Cat said, after throwing back a huge glass of Scotch. “He’s about your age. I… I lost custody of him when he was a baby. I was young. That’s… it’s not an excuse. I thought that building a company to ensure his future was just as important as spending time with him. I sacrificed the latter for the former, and his father used it against me in court. I… I didn’t bother contesting it. He was right. Adam was better off without me.”

 

“I doubt that,” Kara said softly. “I promise you, Cat. We’ll get the proof from Dirk’s emails today and get this all shut down, so any media outlets who release anything else will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And then… I think you should reach out to him. Tell him what you told me. Tell him that you messed up and that you always wanted him. I lost my parents – I know what that feels like. And I knew that they wanted me, you know? If I didn’t know that they cared, if I knew they were still out there and sending me money but not seeing me? That would hurt. So if you do regret giving him up, I think you need to try, Cat.”

 

Cat nodded. “Thank you, Kara. For not judging me.”

 

“I would never presume to judge anyone’s actions, Cat. I don’t know how I would react in any given situation. And even if I did know, I would never judge you for making a mistake. You can still fix it, if you want to. Have a relationship with him in future. It seems like it might be important to you.”

 

Cat was lost in thought, leaning on the balcony.

 

“Do you have a soulmate, Miss Grant?” Kara asked, suddenly.

 

“Oh. Yes, I suppose I do. Whoever or whatever they are, though, I haven’t met them yet,” Cat said, shrugging. She wore a wide leather watch on her left arm and Kara had never wanted to assume or intrude by looking at it. Cat pulled off the watch carefully, showing her mark to Kara.

  
It was alien in origin. Not Kryptonian; she could tell that much. It reminded her of the runes the Durlans had used at one point, but Durla was under occupation and Kara was pretty sure there weren’t that many Durlans left in the universe.

 

“I think I’ve seen it before, but I can’t tell you what it says,” Kara said, tracing the mark gently. “I am almost 100% sure that this is an alien language. Durlan, specifically. I hope you meet them soon, Cat. You deserve it.”

 

“If I really have a soulmate, why haven’t they found me? I have an excuse – I can’t even read this. But whoever my soulmate it, he or she or they has my name in English, plain as day, written on their arm.”

 

“And what if they’re on another planet, and they don’t speak English yet?” Kara asked, gently.

 

Cat was silent.

 

“You make a good point,” she said, finally.

 

“I usually do,” Kara said. “If you were my soulmate, for example, my name would have appeared on your wrist as soon as the spell took power. But I wouldn’t have arrived for a long time, because I was trapped in stasis in the Phantom Zone. You and I are actually the same age, Cat. There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” she quoted, playfully.

 

“You give an old woman hope, Kara Danvers,” Cat said, a little wide-eyed. “I think I might have to broaden my mind a little, soon.”

 

She wasn’t wrong.

 

Winn came through for them later that day, providing proof that Dirk Armstrong was behind the hack into Cat’s emails. Kara made the necessary arrangements with pleasure. Dirk was about to find himself in a prison cell, and every media outlet promised to immediately withdraw their stories about Cat and to publish apologies on their online and print editions within 24 hours.

 

The meeting that followed with the Board was a deeply satisfying experience. Kara bit back a grin as Cat tore strips from Dirk Armstrong’s ego, and warned the rest of the board that she was watching them. They had already decided not to mention that Kara was a shareholder and that between them, Kara and Cat had the shares to outvote the entire board.   


“We’ll leave that in case it becomes necessary in future,” Cat had decided. Kara nodded.

 

That night, she went home to Alex and they made love until the early hours of the morning, happy and relaxed and deeply in love.  She had a job that she loved, a soulmate she was about to marry, and friends who cared about her enough to risk jail (Winn and James) or spend millions to help her (Lena).

 

It was the last time she would be content for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've put a comment on this story recently, thank you, and I'm sorry if I haven't replied. My laptop is being an asshole and I can't stay on the internet for more than a few minutes without it making my whole home network implode. While I wait to get it fixed, I probably won't be able to reply to comments. I hate to do that, believe me, but I don't have another laptop and I cannot for the life of me manage to reply to comments on my phone. I promise I read them and cherish every single one.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An incident forces Kara to expose herself as an alien, and Cat and Alex meet for the first time.

* * *

* * *

 

Alex loved watching Kara do her thing at CatCo. She made a mental note to thank Cat Grant if she ever got to meet the woman. Her belief in Kara had boosted Kara from a wreck to the woman who strutted home from work wearing designer clothes and a satisfied smile. She was happy, fulfilled, and Alex smiled every time she saw that look on Kara’s face. That look that meant Kara was remembering who she was before Cadmus. Kara Zor-El, the youngest ever entrant to the science guild on Krypton. Kara Zor-El, who could outthink any genius on earth in a heartbeat. Alex was hopelessly attracted to Kara at the best of times, but when she came home from work after a good day at CatCo, Alex was ten times more helpless before her soulmate. And Kara took advantage of that mercilessly. Alex wasn’t complaining, however.

 

They were going to the Fortress at the weekend to complete their bonding. Kal and Lois had already gone through the ceremony, according to Eliza. Strangely, they hadn’t thought to ask Kara to join them. Alex was pissed at Kal for that, but it was just another thing on a long list of things she wanted to nut-punch him with Kryptonite for. When Eliza told them that Lois’ leg was growing back, and that she was showing signs of having Kryptonian senses and strength, Alex was left reeling at the implications.

 

Alex smiled, watching Kara turn over, stuffing her face deep into her pillow. She didn’t look the most graceful when she was asleep – she drooled, flopped around, and did unspeakable things to her hair. But she was beautiful to Alex no matter how stupid her hair looked or how much drool was encrusted on her face.

 

“Why are you watching me, Agent Danvers?” Kara muttered, voice muffled by the pillow. “I can hear you thinking.”

 

“I was just thinking that you’re beautiful,” Alex said, honestly.

 

Kara lifted her head, blearily, and turned to look at Alex. Her hair looked like a mixture of a haystack and a tumbleweed, and her face was red, her eyes swollen. Ten seconds in the sun and she’d look like a supermodel, as usual, but Alex loved her like this. Few people got to see Kara this way.

 

“I love you, Kara Zor-El,” she said, fondly.

 

“I love you too, Alex,” Kara said. “What time do you start work?”

 

Alex checked her watch.

 

“Not for 2 hours. I need to visit the bank, first though. I get to skip the queue with my ‘FBI’ credentials,” she said, smiling.

 

“You federal types, running roughshod over the little guy,” Kara said, shaking her head in mock disapproval.

 

“You don’t mind it when I run roughshod all over you,” Alex said, grabbing Kara’s hair and tightening her fist. Kara grinned.

 

“I don’t mind at all, Agent. Would you like to interrogate me? I promise I’ll co-operate.”

 

Alex growled a little and pulled Kara close, kissing her as hard as she could manage without breaking her own teeth. Since they’d started sleeping together, things had gone from hesitant and sweet to rough and playful. It depended on their mood, of course, but they were both physical beings and they tended to end up biting and pulling hair rather than trading soft kisses.

 

“I’m going to miss you today,” Kara said, as she bit and sucked her way down Alex’s side. “I’m going to miss you so much.”

 

“It’s just work,” Alex said. “I’ll be back before you know it. Anyway, you’ll be off making mergers and thwarting takeovers the whole time. You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

 

“Oh, shut up,” Kara said. “You love it when I’m all head bitch in charge.”

 

“Yes I do,” Alex said, arching her back as Kara bit a particularly ticklish section of her abdomen. “I love every version of you, Kara Zor-El.”

 

Kara looked up at her, expression softening.

 

“ _Khap zhao rrip_ ,” she murmured. “I can’t wait to be bonded, Alex Danvers.”

 

“Me either,” Alex said, eyes intent on Kara’s. “I can’t wait.”

 

They came together roughly, then, and Kara had to have a shower and dress at super-speed, afterwards, because she was running late for work. Alex had a more leisurely shower after kissing Kara goodbye, and she dressed carefully in her generic Agent get up – a plain black suit and severe grey blouse. She strapped on her service weapon and the backup went on her ankle. Some agents never wore their weapons unless they were on active duty, but Alex didn’t believe in taking chances. Especially when there might still be Cadmus members out there.

 

She pulled up outside the bank, leaving her SUV parked a little sloppily. She didn’t notice the tracking device attached to the back wheel-arch – it was something she normally checked, but she was pretty loved-up that morning after Kara had ravished her thoroughly, and she was distracted. She stepped inside the bank, showing her badge to the teller, and requested a withdrawal. She was waiting as the cashier counted the money when the woman froze, her face contorted in terror.

 

“Get down on the fucking floor!”

 

The yelling was accompanied by a barrage of shots that were fired into the ceiling, judging from the drywall dust that immediately started choking Alex. She got down on the floor quickly, her right arm underneath her, so that she could remove her service weapon from her shoulder holster. She eased it out, inch by inch, and then froze as something pressed to her neck. Something cold.

 

“Take out your weapon, hold it arm’s length, and drop it.”

 

She swallowed, pulling the gun out slowly, careful to keep her fingers only on the grip and nowhere near the trigger. She dropped it at arm’s length as instructed, and the gun on her neck was removed.

 

“You move an inch, bitch, and I’ll take your fucking head off.”

 

Alex nodded, the rest of her body remaining still.

 

Another of the robbers was shouting the usual stuff about filling the bag at the poor cashier, who sounded terrified as she squeaked out confirmation. Alex didn’t dare look up.

 

After a moment the voice started yelling at the cashier, demanding more money.

 

“I don’t have any more cash in the drawer,” she said, sobbing. “The rest is in the safe.”

 

“Who has access?!”

 

“Just the manager,” the woman said.

 

“Fine. You’re no use to me.”

 

There was a shot, and then a loud thud, and Alex winced. They weren’t afraid to kill people, clearly. The other voice – the one who’d held a gun on her – shouted at her and unnamed others to stand up, hands in the air. Alex did so, hoping that her ankle holster wasn’t visible. It was tucked halfway into her boot, so it shouldn’t be noticeable, but then she hadn’t planned on throwing herself to the floor today. She wasn’t sure if her pant leg might have risen up.

 

“Move,” she was told, a gun poking the middle of her back. She was tempted to spin around, to knock the guy out – touching her with the gun was a rookie move. You always stayed back, kept your advantage so that you were in shooting range and they were too far away to touch easily. Amateurs. But she didn’t have a good visual on the rest of the room, and she wasn’t sure how many robbers there were. She averted her eyes as they passed the cashier’s body, sending a prayer to Rao for the woman’s soul. She was pushed into the back area, and held at gunpoint by the same man who’d held a gun on her before. He was either wearing a really good mask or he was an alien of a species she’d never seen before. She stood in a small corridor with 8 other civilians – the bank was quiet that day – and watched carefully as the other robber broke down the door to the manager’s office, pulling the balding, sweaty man out of the room by his collar.

 

The second robber turned his back on her, still pointing his gun in her direction. Alex started to move, as slowly as she could, lifting her right leg up behind her silently. The first robber was busy hitting the bank manager, trying to get him to give up a way to get into the safe. The man was sobbing, blubbering, and Alex was caught between irritation and sympathy. Finally, she pulled out her tiny .22 from her ankle holster, and shot the second robber in the head before turning the gun on the first.

 

“Drop your weapon! FBI!” she bellowed.

 

“Fuck you, lady,” the man (or alien) screamed. “I’ll kill every one of these hostages.”

 

“You can only kill one before I kill you,” Alex stated, flatly.

 

“You think?” he asked, a smirk on his face. She shifted uneasily, about to shout another demand, when he disappeared into thin air and something hit her on the back of the head, hard. She had no time to think or move before she fell headfirst into black.

 

***

 

Her head was splitting. In fact, it was literally split. She could feel blood oozing down the back of her neck. She opened her eyes carefully, wincing at the light that was blinking on and off. She was tied up, tied to a surface behind her. She looked around and it appeared that she was alone. She began trying to free herself, turning her head with a wince to see that she was, for some reason, secured to the huge steel door of the bank vault.

 

“What the…?” she muttered, puzzled.

 

She looked around, freezing when she saw the source of the light that had hurt her eyes a moment earlier. It was the readout on a digital panel, a panel that was counting down time. It was attached to what looked like plastic explosive. Enough C4 to vaporise her, to break into the vault, and to take most of the block out with it. She had… 2 minutes and 12 seconds. She started to struggle, breaking her thumb to get her left hand free from the handcuffs. She swore loudly at the pain. That’s when she noticed that they had used several zip-ties to secure her, too. She groaned, starting to get frantic. She couldn’t get out of her bonds. She was going to die, here, because of a fucking stupid bank robbery. Kara would be alone, again, and it just wasn’t fair. She started to yell Kara’s name, over and over, praying that her soulmate might hear her. She was fairly sure that the section of the building where the vault was located was painted in lead, and she wasn’t sure if that blocked Kara’s super-hearing, but it was worth a try. Better than certain death.

 

Kara didn’t come. Kara couldn’t hear her. Alex begged Rao, using the few Kryptonian words she knew, to please save her, for Kara’s sake. The bomb’s timer read 0:08 when she heard a whooshing sound, and then it the bomb was gone and she was untied. She heard an explosion from directly above her, an explosion that shook the building, and she stood up and began running immediately. There was another thump as she continued running, finding a staircase and making her way upstairs to the main floor.

 

It took her a few moments to find the right door, but she kicked it down and made her way into the banking hall, finding a scene of chaos. The first alien was lying on the ground, his face bloody, and there were people standing around another fallen figure. She first retrieved her gun (and his) from the perp’s unconscious body, and then ran to the side of the second figure, finding Kara lying in a small crater, her hair covering most of her face. She was still wearing her clothes from CatCo, but they were torn and half-destroyed.

 

“Back up please, FBI!” Alex said, holding her hands out to stop the curious bystanders from taking pictures. She could see Kara’s chest rising up and down steadily.

 

“She saved us!” one of the other bank customers shouted. “She flew that bomb outside and it must have knocked her out.”

 

“Thank you, ma’am,” Alex said, absently. “Someone will be along to get your statement shortly.”

 

She pulled out her phone from her inside pocket and called J’onn, giving him her location and telling him they needed a DEO team since the robbers (and her rescuer) were clearly alien in origin. Then Alex lifted Kara over her shoulder in a fireman’s lift, taking her outside and putting her limp body in the back of her SUV where there was privacy glass. She stood outside of the car, weapon in hand, clearly guarding their saviour. No-one dared argue with her, and a few minutes later a fleet of SUVs screeched to a halt outside the bank.

 

J’onn stepped out of the third vehicle in his guise as Hank Henshaw, and he walked over to Alex quickly.

 

“What happened here, Alex?” he asked, frowning.

 

She gave him a brief but detailed version of events, confirming that she had Kara in the back of the car.

 

“Should I bring her back to the DEO?” she asked.

 

“Not yet,” he said, frowning. “Get her out of here for now, take her to CatCo. The Grant woman will help you to keep her out of sight until we can get this locked down.”

 

“Okay,” Alex said. She jumped into the car, screeching off at speed, and as soon as she was entirely sure that she wasn’t being followed, she made her way to CatCo. She called Cat Grant as she got close to the building, explaining the situation in as few words as possible, and Cat told her how to get to the side door where she could access her private elevator.

 

Alex pulled up at the side of the building, lifting Kara out in her arms as if she was carrying her over the threshold, glad to feel Kara’s body moving with her breathing. They made it into the elevator without incident, and when they got to the correct floor, they were greeted by an anxious Cat Grant and an empty bullpen.

 

“Bring her inside, Agent Danvers,” Cat said.

 

“You know who I am?” Alex asked, following Cat, grunting a little under Kara’s weight.

 

“Of course. Kara is always talking about her soulmate, and though she tries to be subtle, it became clear to me almost immediately that you were one of the shadowy government types who helped her escape from wherever she was,” Cat said, pulling the door closed behind them and pressing a button that turned the glass doors opaque.

 

“She does try,” Alex said, placing Kara carefully on Cat’s couch and sitting next to her, stroking her soulmate’s hair back. Apart from some soot and the damage to her clothing, she looked remarkably okay. “But she’s not good with lies. It’s one of the things I love most about her.”

 

“I can understand that,” Cat said, quietly. “Can I get you a drink or something, Agent?”

 

“Please, call me Alex,” she said. “And I’d love a scotch. I know it’s early, but I just got saved from a bomb by my alien soulmate. I’m a little shaken up.”

 

“That sounds fair,” Cat said. “Alex it is.”

 

She brought a generous measure of scotch and Alex drank most of it in one go. Cat also placed some water next to her on the table.

 

“For Kara, when she wakes,” she said, at Alex’s raised eyebrow. Cat sat on a chair close by, sipping on her own scotch. “So what happened?”

 

Alex looked at Cat intently.

 

“Is this going to end up in the Tribune?” she asked, eyes narrowed.

 

“No,” Cat said simply. “I would never betray Kara like that.”

 

“What is it with you and my soulmate?” Alex asked, blurting it out. “You treat her like she’s the most important person in the world. Why are you doing all this stuff for her?”

 

Cat blushed slightly.

 

“I will admit that when I first met your soulmate, I had something of a crush on her. As you stated, Kara doesn’t lie well. I worked out her alien nature almost immediately, and my soulmark is – well, have a look,” Cat said, taking off her watch and holding her wrist out to Alex.

 

“Are those… Durlan runes?” Alex asked, holding Cat’s pale wrist gently as she examined the marks.

 

“Yes,” Cat said. “Or so your soulmate thinks. In any case, I thought Kara was my one, but then she disappeared. When she came back, I was overjoyed, but it became clear immediately that she had already met her soulmate, and I immediately let go of the idea, because I would never interfere in a bond, much as I might have wanted to.”

 

Alex looked at Cat evenly, making an effort not to glare.

 

“And now?”

 

“And now, I want to utilise her talents and I want to protect my legacy, which is this media empire,” Cat said, gesturing at the building around them. “Since I began on this journey, I have met only one other person who had the mind and the skill to run something like CatCo the way I would want it to be run, and she married that stupid lump, Kent.”

 

“Clark Kent?” Alex asked, brow furrowed. “Are you talking about Clark Kent and Lois Lane?”

 

Cat looked at her with some surprise.

 

“Yes, I am,” she said, frowning. “How do you know them?”

 

“Clark is Kara’s cousin,” Alex said.

 

“Her cousin? Doesn’t that make him your cousin too, if you were foster siblings?” Cat asked, confused.

 

“No,” Alex said, gently. “Look, this stays between us, okay?”

 

Cat nodded.

 

“He’s Kara’s biological cousin.”

 

“Oh,” Cat said, thinking, and then her eyes widened. “Superman?” she whispered.

 

Alex shrugged. “I know, he’s much less impressive as Clark,” she said.

 

“Jesus. Well, now I don’t feel so bad that Lois dumped me. At least it was for an alien demigod and not just some lump from Kansas.”

 

“You were dating Lois first?” Alex asked, eyebrow climbing.

 

“I was. And then she fell in love with that sentient corn stalk, and I was left to pick up the pieces. I should thank her, really; breaking up with her gave me the impetus to start CatCo. But it hurt a lot at the time.”

 

“You dated Lois?” Kara asked, her voice a little slurred. “I would have loved to have seen that.”

 

Alex and Cat both laughed. If it sounded a little shrill with relief, well, no-one was there to know but the two of them and Kara.

 

***

 

Kara was trying very, very hard not to hyperventilate. She was lying on one of the pristine couches in Cat’s office, her clothes in pieces from the bomb. It must have been a seriously potent explosive, because it managed to knock Kara out, which took some doing when there was no Kryptonite in the area.

 

“Are you okay?” Alex asked, after they had stopped laughing about Cat dating Lois.

 

“A little tired,” Kara admitted.

 

“Okay Stargirl, time to get you some sun,” Alex said, pulling Kara up. She wrapped one of Kara’s arms around her shoulder, and Cat Grant took the other, grunting a little from the weight.

 

“How much do you weigh, Kara?” Cat puffed, as they made their way slowly to the balcony.

 

“That’s… classified,” Kara muttered.

 

Alex snorted.

 

“She weighs at least twice what a human her size would,” Alex said. “She’s embarrassed by it, despite the fact that her molecular structure is completely different from ours. It’s so much more dense; that’s what makes her so strong.”

 

“Fascinating,” Cat said, clearly being sarcastic. “And why are we putting her in the sun again?”

 

“It helps recharge her abilities,” Alex explained. “She’ll heal faster this way.”

 

Kara slumped to the couch, her body aching. The sun made her feel better immediately, and she groaned in relief.

 

“Keep doing that, Stargirl, and things are gonna get very x-rated up here,” Alex murmured into her ear.

 

Kara blushed, and Cat looked at them both curiously.

 

“Can we keep it PG in the workplace please, Danvers squared?” she said sourly. “Some of us have yet to find our happy ending.”

 

“Sorry Cat,” Kara said, genuinely contrite.

 

“I’m just envious, don’t mind me,” Cat said dismissively, flapping a hand in the air. “Kara, I’ve sent Showmance to Marcy to pick up some clothes in your size. Once you’ve taken in enough sun, I want you to shower in my private bathroom,” Cat said. “And then you can go back to your shadowy government headquarters. And I need you to put these glasses on, okay? Just in case anyone barges in and recognises you.”

 

Kara nodded dumbly. Cat put a pair of glasses on her face – not her own, unfortunately, since they were smashed beyond repair in an alleyway behind CatCo – but a generic pair of glasses with clear lenses. She let her body rest for a little while, Alex sitting next to her, holding her hand. She hummed in contentment as Alex ran her thumb over her knuckles and her palm in whirling patterns.

 

“I thought I was going to lose you,” Kara said. “I heard you calling, and it was so faint, and I looked through the buildings and there were only 14 seconds left on that device. I’ve never moved so fast in my life.”

 

“I’m so glad you did,” Alex said. “I didn’t want to leave you.”

 

“I heard you praying,” Kara said.

 

“I… I wanted Rao to help you, if I was gone. I… I didn’t know what else to do.”

 

“You’re my world, Alex Danvers. I love you so much.”

 

Alex kissed her hand.

 

A little later, Siobhan appeared with Kara’s clothes, clearly trying to get a good look at Kara and Alex, but Alex stood, her hand reaching for her shoulder holster, and Siobhan backed away, wide-eyed.

 

“I love it when you do that,” Kara said, smiling.

 

“I love doing that,” Alex said, grinning. “And you know what they say. Curiosity killed the cat.”

 

“No Cat puns in my building,” Cat said, from her desk.

 

“Sorry,” Alex said. “My bad.”

 

“You’re forgiven this once,” Cat said, snarkily. “Now, Kara. I think it’s time you showered, and then headed off to whichever black ops government outfit you work with. I don’t believe anyone will be looking for you here, now.”

 

Kara nodded, squeezing Alex’s hand. She followed Cat to her cleverly-hidden bathroom and showered in steaming hot water. Cat brought the fresh clothes in half-way through her shower, and Kara put them on once she’d spun herself dry. She put her hair up carefully and dressed.

 

Alex took Kara’s hand when she emerged from the bathroom, seemingly not wanting to be separated from Kara for too long. They thanked Cat profusely before leaving. When Kara got close to Alex’s car, however, she winced.

 

“What’s wrong?” Alex asked, frowning at her.

 

“Can’t you hear that?” Kara asked, face scrunched up in pain. “It’s like a high-pitched electrical noise.”

 

Alex shook her head, baffled, and Kara sighed.

 

“It must be too high for humans to hear,” she muttered, searching around them with her x-ray vision. After a moment, she froze. “Alex, there’s something on your car.”

 

“What?” Alex asked.  She had already drawn her gun and was looking around the deserted side street nervously.

 

“It’s some sort of transmitter,” Kara said. “Stay back.” She moved to the back of Alex’s car, looking at the small device that was magnetically attached to the wheel-well. She examined the wiring carefully with her x-ray vision, checking that it wasn’t connected to the fuel tank or any sort of explosive. She pulled it out after a second. “It’s a tracker,” she said.

 

“Why would someone be tracking me?” Alex asked.

 

“I don’t know,” Kara said, troubled. “But I think we need to let J’onn know that this was on your car the same day you were almost killed.”

 

“You think the bank robbery was a ruse, that this was aimed at me?” Alex asked.

 

“I think it’s more than possible,” Kara said. “Come on. Let’s get to the DEO. I want you somewhere safe.”

 

Alex nodded, stowing her gun back in its holster, and she got into the driving seat, driving even more erratically than normal, her eyes constantly moving between the car’s mirrors.

 

“We’ll be okay,” Kara said, touching Alex’s hand. “It’ll be fine. Whoever put the tracker on your car, we’ll find them.” She pulled the plastic cover from the device and pulled out the small wire that was attached to the power source. Normally she would have just crushed it to dust, but she thought it might be a good idea if the DEO could have a look at the tracker to see where it came from.

 

As they stepped through the main doors of the DEO, Kara heard cheering, and was stunned to see that the DEO’s staff had all stopped work to applaud her.

 

“Yes, yes, everyone. Our resident Kryptonian did well, and she will be thanked accordingly,” J’onn said, holding his hand up for quiet. The staff went back to work, but they looked up at Kara with grateful nods when J’onn wasn’t looking.

 

“Looks like you’ve made an impression here,” Kara said, smiling at Alex.

 

“Shut up, Kara,” Alex said, blushing. “They’re just glad you did a good deed.”

 

“They’re glad that I saved their second-in-command from a bomb,” Kara said. “And you’re that second in command, _:zrhueiao_.”

 

Alex huffed, but Kara ignored her protests, smiling. J’onn called them in to one of the briefing rooms, and Alex squared her shoulders, pulling Kara along with her.

 

J’onn made a valiant attempt to scold Kara for exposing her presence in National City, but the effect was somewhat spoiled by the proud smile that kept breaking out across his face, and the tears that filled his eyes each time he looked at Alex. Soon enough, it was over, and he called Winn in to the briefing room.

 

Winn entered, carrying something in a garment bag.

 

“Kara, that was soooooo cool!” he said, offering a fist bump which Kara returned. “You’re a bona fide hero, baby!”

 

Kara smiled. “Thanks, Winn. Like I said before, I couldn’t leave Alex to die when I haven’t even married her yet.”

 

Winn smiled widely. “I am so pleased for you guys,” he said. “And now, ze uniform!” he said, opening the zipper on the bag with a flourish. He pulled out a suit similar to Superman’s, all blues and reds and golds. It had dark blue pants and a leather over-skirt, similar to a loincloth, and thick red boots with greaves and bracers for her arms. It looked bad-ass.

 

“Wow,” Kara said, studying it. “You guys really want me to wear this?” she asked, looking at Alex and J’onn.

 

“We do,” J’onn confirmed gravely. “I want you to protect your civilian identity, and saving the people in the bank and letting yourself be seen means that we need to give you a public persona. Hopefully that will mean that Cadmus will go for the superhero instead of Kara Danvers. It’s not just for Cadmus’s benefit, of course. Agent Danvers has been quite clear that you are entitled to life as a civilian, and I tend to agree with her. There is no reason why you shouldn’t have as normal a life as possible. But if you are willing, public sightings of this new superhero are your best way to hide. If you’re in plain sight, the media will not feel the need to hunt for you.”

 

“Cat will help with that,” Kara said. “She can publish an interview with superhero-me, if you agree. What do you think?”

 

J’onn exchanged glances with Alex before nodding.

 

“That seems like a good plan,” he said. “Do what you need to, Supergirl.”

 

“Would you stop calling me that!” she said, turning to glare at Winn. “I told you I didn’t want to be called Supergirl! No-one goes around calling Kal Superboy! It’s a total sexist double-standard.”

 

“Superwoman it is,” J’onn agreed, wide-eyed. “Or whatever you want to be called. But your suit clearly marks you as being related to Superman in some way.”

 

“I’ll ask Cat how she thinks I should handle it,” Kara said, confidently. “And I suppose I should speak to Kal-El, out of courtesy.”

 

“I’m sure he’ll be in touch with us, but I’ll ask him to drop by,” J’onn said.

 

“Thank you,” Kara said. “Should I go save a kitten from a tree now, or something?”

 

“No,” J’onn said. “Give it a day. Winn, make sure she has a tracker on that cape and on the boots, and an earwig communicator. We’ll direct you from here for any matters you can help with. For now, I suggest you take your soulmate home, Agent Danvers, and make sure she eats plenty to make up for all the energy she just used.”

 

He clapped Kara on the back as he left the room, nodding at her. She smiled back, glad to find that he didn’t hate her for exposing her powers. She couldn’t have done anything different, she knew, but she also didn’t want trouble with a clandestine government agency. Cadmus might have been disavowed, but they were government, too, at one point.

 

Winn made sure to give her several earwigs in case she broke one, suggesting she wore them all the time just in case.

 

“You never know when the world might need Supergirl,” he said, brightly. Kara glared at him until he was stuttering and blushing. She remembered the tracker from Alex’s car, then, and asked him to find out where it came from.

 

“I can’t believe you exposed yourself like that, Kara,” Alex said, when they were in the privacy of her car.

 

“What else would you have me do, Alex?” Kara asked. “I love you. I would risk another thousand years at Cadmus if it kept you safe.”

 

Alex took a deep breath.

 

“You’re crazy, Kara. I would never let you do that.”

 

“Maybe so, but I would still give myself up to them if it meant keeping you alive,” Kara said, stubbornly. “So you can tell me I was wrong, but I’m not sorry. I love you and I’ll always protect you, right down to my last breath.”

 

Alex had to wipe away tears as she drove them home, and Kara grasped her free hand, squeezing it as gently as she could in encouragement.

 

Alex ordered so much take-out that even Kara’s eyes widened. To her surprise, though, she managed to eat the majority of it in one sitting. It turned out that having a bomb explode in your hands made a person hungry.

 

“That was impressive,” Alex said, afterwards. “I didn’t think you’d be able to eat half of that.

 

“Neither did I,” Kara said. “But I don’t even feel uncomfortable.”

 

“Wow,” Alex said. They sat in silence for a while, the television filling the room with noise, but neither of them were paying any attention, just watching each other, fingers entwined. Kara had been a much quieter person since she returned from Cadmus, no longer babbling about whatever was on her mind at any given time, but even for her, the silence lingered. It was long and intense and she didn’t want to speak ever again. She just wanted Alex to be near her, touching her, forever.

 

The small touches turned into clutching at clothes, pulling each other closer, foreheads together.

 

“I nearly lost you,” Kara whispered. “I can’t lose you, Alex.”

 

“You won’t, Supergirl,” Alex breathed. Kara shivered. “You like that name now, Supergirl?”

 

“It sounds nice when you say it,” Kara breathed. Alex was breathing practically into her mouth, and it was driving her crazy. She stood up, abruptly, and moved them at super-speed into the bedroom.

 

Kara was religious. She believed in Rao, that he protected her even when she was light years from home. She believed that her family awaited her in Rao’s light. She had faith. But that night, with Alex, she truly felt that Rao existed, felt his presence as they made love fervently, moving together in harmony. This wasn’t just sex. It was transcendent, and Kara wept in Alex’s arms afterwards because of the beauty of it.

 

She woke enough to send a quick message to Cat asking if they could meet early the following morning, and then she fell asleep with Alex wrapped tight in her arms. She slept dreaming of her family, reunited. Her mother laughing with Alex and her father nodding at them both proudly. When she woke the next morning, she felt that Rao had given his blessing on their bond, and she couldn’t stop herself from smiling.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Supergirl steps out into the light, and it's time for Kara and Alex to be bonded, but of course, something comes up that threatens to take away their happiness

 

* * *

After reluctantly leaving Alex at the DEO the following morning, Kara went to CatCo early. She was wearing her new suit underneath her clothes, or the parts that would fit, at least. She had the cape, boots and loincloth stored in her bag. Luckily, they were made of a strange material that folded down into almost nothing, made from some off-world substance, she assumed.

 

Cat was waiting for her impatiently when she entered her office.

 

“Are you okay? Why didn’t you call me last night to let me know you were home?” she demanded, pacing up and down.

 

“I got a little sidetracked,” Kara said. “My bond-mate was in danger, and it roused certain… instincts,” she said, blushing. “But I’m hoping that you will help me to create a superhero.”

 

Cat looked at her with narrowed eyes.

 

“Tell me more,” she said, sitting down on her couch and turning on the privacy glass so that her office was blocked off from public view. Kara spun into her new suit, flipping her hair into exaggerated curls so that the blonde sections were more prominent. She took off her glasses as the last step, and then stood in front of Cat, her shoulders squared and her chin up.

 

“Miss Grant,” she said, nodding confidently.

 

Cat stared up at her.

 

“God,” she breathed. “You’re… you look amazing, Kara. Is that… is that Superman’s S?”

 

“It’s not an ‘S’,” Kara said, sighing. She pulled the cape to one side, sitting down opposite Cat.

 

“What is it, then?” Cat asked, pulling a notebook out of thin air, it seemed, and a pen from Rao only knew where.

 

“It’s our family’s crest,” Kara said. “It means ‘Stronger together’. It’s a symbol of hope.”

 

“And is that what you stand for?” Cat asked, scribbling furiously.

 

“Of course,” Kara said. “I live in hope every day, Miss Grant,” she said, earnestly. “I hope that my parents will be waiting for me when I go into Rao’s light. I hope that humanity will find the strength to avoid the fate that caused my planet’s destruction. I hope that people will care enough for each other that they will stop hurting and killing others. That they will stop putting money before people. Sometimes, hope is all we have.”

 

“And yesterday, you saved a group of hostages at a bank, carrying a bomb that exploded in your arms. Why now, Supergirl?” Cat asked, narrowing her eyes.

 

“Oh Rao, not you too,” Kara said, groaning.

 

“You don’t like that name?” Cat asked, glaring. “Tough. It’s my media empire. You’re the subject, and you’re now Supergirl.”

 

“Fine,” Kara said, groaning exaggeratedly. She had already come to terms with the name, in all honesty, especially since Alex whispered it into her ear the night before.

 

“So you saved those people at the bank. Why come out now? How did you know that National City’s hero would not stop the robbers and dispose of the bomb, as she has done before?”

 

“I knew that the hero you named the Shadow was not here,” Kara said, carefully. “I knew that if that bomb went off, it could hurt a lot of people, not just those inside the bank. I could not let that happen.”

 

“And yet you have never rescued anyone in National City before,” Cat said.

 

“I wasn’t here, Miss Grant. That’s all I can say about that.”

 

“Very well, Supergirl. So what is your relation to Superman?”

 

“I’d prefer not to say, Miss Grant. Suffice it to say, I know of him and I wish him well.”

 

“You’re not his wife? Sister?”

 

“Ew,” Kara said, shaking her head. “No. And that’s all I’ll be saying on that subject.”

 

Cat snickered. “I’m keeping that in. Ew. Lois will get a kick out of that.”

 

“Wait a minute. You know?” Kara asked, eyes wide.

 

“Yes, your sister enlightened me on that one,” Cat said, sighing. “I still can’t believe that harpy managed to land the Man of Steel.”

 

Kara couldn’t help it. She giggled. The glare that Cat shot at her would have killed an ordinary human, she was sure.

 

“Anyway, I was hoping you could ask James to do some shots of my next rescue,” Kara said, when Cat had stopped asking questions.

 

“We can do that. Just… take it slowly, Kara. You’re new to this. I know you’re probably as strong as Superman, but he took a while to get things right. Do you have all the same powers?”

 

“Theoretically,” Kara said. “I haven’t used mine much, because I was hiding, and then because I was kidnapped. I’ll try to take things slow,” she confirmed.

 

“Good,” Cat said. “Now, off the record, would you tell me a little more about your relationship to Superman?”

 

“He’s my cousin,” Kara said. “He found me when my pod landed, and brought me to the Danvers. Eliza – she was kind of crazy,” Kara said, sadly. “If Alex hadn’t been there, I don’t know if I would have made it. As it was, I still ended up in that place.” She drifted a little in her mind, then. Flashes of green and sharp steel and muscles ripping filled her mind.

 

Cat snapped her fingers in Kara’s face after a minute.  “You’re not there now, Kara.”

 

Kara nodded wearily.

 

“Why didn’t he look after you?” Cat asked, quietly.

 

“He said he couldn’t. He was right, really. He… Lois had just been injured, lost her leg, and he was fighting a battle with Lex and Cadmus. Taking on a super-powered teenager just wasn’t feasible. I was angry, for a long time, but he brought me to my soulmate, so I couldn’t really object. It was Eliza who… you know what? That’s a whole other story,” Kara said, abruptly. “I can’t… maybe another time.”

 

“Of course,” Cat said. “I’m sorry to open old wounds.”

 

“It’s… it’s fine, Cat.”

 

Her earpiece crackled just then, and the voice of one of the DEO’s agents broke in to her ear.

 

“Supergirl? This is the DEO. We have a situation at the docks. There’s a fire. The Director has asked for your presence.”

 

“On my way,” Kara said. She turned to Cat. “There’s a fire at the docks,” she said. “Can you send James?”

 

“Of course, Kara. Be careful, please? And remember to keep your help small. If you can’t do something one way, find another.”

 

Kara nodded, shooting into the air from Cat’s balcony. A minute later she was touching down in front of a building that was on fire, right on the edge of the docks. There was a huge ship right next to it.

 

“What can I do?” she asked, searching out the fire chief.

 

“We need to make sure the fire stays away from the ship,” he said. “It’s an oil tanker. If it explodes, it’s going to take out half of the city.”

 

She looked at the ship and the fire, thinking. She could try freeze breath, but she’d never managed to produce anything above a small gust to tickle Alex’s neck. That certainly wasn’t going to do it. She looked around her quickly, finding an empty shipping container nearby. She flew to it, lifting it and flying out past the threatened ship and dunking the container into the bay, filling it with water. It wasn’t watertight, but it still held a huge volume of water. She moved as fast as she could and dumped the water unceremoniously over the burning building. The fire dampened down to a smoulder, and Kara repeated the action, this time putting the fire out completely. The ship was dangerously hot, so Kara attempted her freeze breath, once, twice… It didn’t work. She concentrated, imagining that Alex was inside the ship, and suddenly she couldn’t hold it back. The side of the ship froze, not enough to damage the metal, but enough to calm the bubbling and expansion of the oil inside, which had been on the verge of combusting. She took a deep breath of relief.

 

The people on the docks started applauding, and she smiled and waved.

 

“Thank you, whoever you are,” the Fire Chief called out.

 

“I’m Supergirl,” she called back, smiling. She hovered for another second, noticing James standing almost directly below her, giving him time for the perfect shot, and then she flew off, leaving a sonic boom in her wake.

 

A few minutes later she was back in Cat’s office, spinning her way into her work clothes and glasses. She sat down, suddenly feeling boneless, and Cat stared at her.

 

“I took your advice,” Kara said. “I couldn’t be sure about my freeze breath, so I scooped up the water.”

 

“You did a great job, Kara,” Cat said. “I couldn’t be more proud.”

 

Kara nodded. “Would it be all right if I had some coffee?” she asked.

 

“Of course,” Cat said. She called Siobhan, (she called her Showboat, this time) and sent her to Noonan’s. Kara sent a quick message to Alex to confirm that she was okay. Alex sent back a proud-faced selfie.

 

Cat released her interview with ‘Supergirl’ that afternoon, and it was accompanied by pictures of her putting out the fire and using her freeze breath on the ship. The cover image on the special edition of CatCo magazine and the Tribune was of Kara hovering, the sun behind her, turning her into a dark silhouette with a golden halo of hair. She looked unearthly, and she couldn’t help but stare at the image when Cat handed her the first copy, hot off the presses.

 

“I think that, among other things, you might have just saved the Tribune, Kara Danvers. Because if you give me exclusive access to your alter-ego, we can bring our circulation numbers up and I won’t have to close the paper. Which is something I was loath to do, because it was my first acquisition.”

 

Kara smiled.

 

“I’m glad. I hate that print journalism is declining so much. I mean, I understand it? But it’s kind of sucky.”

 

“Yes,” Cat said, sarcastically. “Sucky. Exactly.”

 

“Hey!” Kara said, protesting Cat’s sarcasm. “I’ll have you know that English isn’t my first language.”

 

“Millenials,” Cat said, rolling her eyes.

 

“Cat, I’m the same age as you are,” Kara said.

 

“Only chronologically,” Cat said. “Look at you. You’re the picture of health and youth. Don’t go telling me you’re 50 years old, Kara. It’s not fair.”

 

“I spent 24 years in stasis, but I was still alive,” Kara said.

 

“Stasis definitely doesn’t count,” Cat said. “Unless you were having your bottom pinched and getting called darling by fat, stupid old white men who wouldn’t know talent if it bit them in the ass.” She waved an arm dismissively, and Kara shook her head.

 

“Whatever,” she drawled, putting on her best impression of a millennial. “Old people are so extra. Why don’t you go pick your kids up from soccer, Brenda?”

 

“What does that even mean?” Cat asked, glaring.

 

“If you don’t know, I can’t help you,” Kara said, checking her makeup in her handheld mirror.

 

Cat glared at her for a moment.

 

“You’ve made your point, Kara.”

 

Kara grinned at her. “I didn’t think you’d give in so quickly.”

 

“I really, really don’t like millennials,” Cat said.

 

Kara chuckled.

 

The rest of the week was plain sailing, so far as CatCo was concerned. Cat allowed Kara the time to make appearances as Supergirl, and didn’t complain when Kara’s mind drifted to her upcoming bonding. When she and Alex were together, it seemed that they couldn’t get enough of each other. Something about almost losing Alex at the bank had ignited something in Kara, and Alex seemed to be feeling it too.

 

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Alex asked, after they had ravished each other for most of the evening. They had spent the early evening with Lena and Ale’ara and a few members of the DEO, as a sort of combined bachelorette party, but as soon as they could, they had beat a hasty exit and headed straight to bed.

 

“I am,” Kara said, smiling at Alex, who was running her fingers up and down Kara’s spine. It felt amazing.

 

“I can’t wait. I wish I could speed up time,” Alex said, uncharacteristically eager.

 

“Is it because you want to see if you get some of my powers, or because you want to be married?” Kara asked, one eyebrow up.

 

“Oh, shut up,” Alex said, pinching Kara’s butt with the hand that had been roaming up and down her back. “You know I couldn’t care less about the powers. As long as I get to stay with you, Kara, I don’t care if I’m human or Kryptonian or anything in between. I want you to be with me, and I want us to be happy, like this. Forever.”

 

Kara nodded seriously.

 

“For what it’s worth, I hope you do get them. I would love to see you fly.”

 

“Me too,” Alex said. “But bonding with you is what I want. What I’ve wanted since I was eighteen years old.”

 

Kara’s smile faded a little as she thought of the years they had lost. But she shook her head. They had a way to make up for that, now. Bonding would allow them to share a similar lifespan, and that was all that mattered.

 

“I love you,” Kara said, kissing Alex’s hair. It smelled amazing, like oranges and honey.

 

“I love you, Kara. I can’t believe we’re about to do this. For the longest time I thought I’d never see you again.”

 

“Me too,” Kara said. “I lost hope. But now we’re here, and we have this amazing chance. I can’t wait to start our new life together.”

 

They started to make love again, slowly and lovingly this time, and afterwards they fell asleep together, sweaty and sated, ready to be joined forever in the light of Rao’s love.

 

***

 

Kara woke alone, as she knew she would. Alex was going to dress at the DEO, and then she was going to meet Kara at the Fortress. Kara went to the balcony and bathed in Sol’s light. She prayed to Rao, thanking him for the opportunity to be here, to bond with the woman she loved more than any other.

 

She had a shower and ate, her muscles thrumming with energy. She was about to go and grab the garment bag that held her robes when there was a knock on the window of the apartment. She frowned, moving to the windows, and found Ale’ara hovering outside the window.

 

“Kara Zor-El, the DEO has been compromised,” she said, in her hissing whisper. “My Lena was visiting a friend from Cadmus and she is trapped there. She was able to send me a message with her telepathy, but then she disappeared from my mind. I think she may be unconscious. If she were dead, I would know, would I not?”

 

“I think you would,” Kara said. And then her heart clenched in her chest. Alex was at the DEO. She ran to grab her phone, calling the woman she loved, but the phone rang twice and then stopped. When she rang again, she got a message telling her that the number was not in service.

 

“Alex is there, too,” Kara said, trying not to panic. “I hope that Astra is still at the Fortress,” she muttered. “Wait here, Ale’ara. I will be back soon with help.”

 

Ale’ara nodded, stepping through the window and furling her huge wings in against her body. Kara put on her Supergirl suit and took off within seconds, breaking the sound barrier almost immediately. She made it to the Fortress in less than 20 mins, finding her aunt and Eliza waiting there. The Fortress looked beautiful, made up for a wedding with beautiful crystals and flowers everywhere. Kara took a second to appreciate it, but then shook her head.

 

“The DEO has been infiltrated. Alex and Lena are both in there,” she said.

  
“Lead the way, Little One,” Astra said, lifting Eliza into her arms in a practiced manoeuvre.

 

Kara flew back to her apartment at speed, finding Ale’ara pacing up and down in the living room.

 

“Astra In-Ze,” she said, nodding respectfully.

 

“Ale’ara,” Astra acknowledged, gravely. “Now, niece, we must call the DEO’s outside task force, and we must retrieve the packs we assembled against just such an attack.”

 

Kara nodded. She pulled out her cellphone, calling the number that Alex had told her to call if this kind of emergency arose. She gave the code she’d been given, Alpha 611 Tango, and spoke to someone who sounded familiar.

 

“Winn, is that you?” she asked, incredulous.

 

“Yes,” he said. “I was at the DEO, just helping Alex get ready, and I left to get some coffee from that place round the corner. Luckily I noticed that the guys who were guarding the door weren’t our guys. I sent a few messages to J’onn’s emergency number and the DEO’s emergency line, and the responses I got weren’t the right codes. The DEO is compromised.”

 

“I know,” Kara said. “Lena managed to send out a message to her soulmate. We have to rescue them, Winn.”

 

“I know we do, Kara. I’m sending you some co-ordinates. Bring yourself and anyone else you can gather here, and we’ll make a plan.”

 

Kara hung up, feeling oddly comforted by Winn’s calm words. Alex would be okay. She had to be. Kara would not accept anything less.

 

Kara and Astra flew to their hiding places, gathering the supplies, including kryptonite shielding, that they had stored in various areas of the planet. When they had collected all of their equipment, they met at the co-ordinates Winn had mentioned.

 

Kara was glad to see that not only had Winn been outside of the DEO, but Agent Vasquez had, too, when Cadmus struck. At least there were two faces she recognised. Others nodded at her, but some regarded her and Astra with suspicion. Kara gave the additional weapons and DEO-issue body armour and other equipment to Vasquez, who handed them out to the appropriate people. Kara and Astra injected each other with the anti-Kryptonite serum and attached the shields underneath their clothing where they weren’t obvious.

 

“Now, we need a plan,” Winn said, calling everyone together. “From what we can tell, the DEO is locked down from the inside. There are multiple aliens inside, and we believe that at least one of those aliens is in league with Cadmus, and helped them get in. Director Jonzz and AD Danvers are there, as is Lena Luthor, an extremely powerful psychic. They could all be unconscious or trapped; we have no way to know.”

 

“Okay,” Kara said. “You infiltrated Cadmus by sending Astra in first. She was able to take out a lot of the agents. There’s nothing we can do this time that will surprise them, because they were unaware that we had a way to shield ourselves from Kryptonite. Now they know. So we’ve lost that element of surprise. Agent Vasquez, is there any way to get in to the DEO where we can get close to the prison cells to let out the friendly aliens?”

 

“If you can provide a diversion at the entrance, then I think we can get in through the exhaust ports near the reactor,” Agent Vasquez said, after a moment of thought.

 

“Okay.”

 

They talked for a while longer, the commander of their off-site DEO team offering some ideas, and they had a solid plan within an hour or so. Kara and Astra were to break in through the front door, making as much noise as they could. Ale’ara was to attack through the goods entrance at the back, taking down as many of the enemy as she could with her sonic scream, a weapon strong enough to take Kara out. The humans would come in through the exhaust ports and take out as many of the Cadmus agents as they could. They would hopefully then meet in the middle, with Cadmus ended once and for all, and everyone they loved safe and alive.

 

Kara took a second to pray before she left, and Astra knelt beside her, reciting the familiar Kryptonian forms together. Alex had to be okay. She just... had to be. Kara couldn't handle the alternative, and she set her jaw as she stood. She was going to save Alex, no matter the cost. 


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jumping right into the action. Alex and the rest of the DEO are trapped inside, and Kara, Astra, Ale'ara and their outside DEO force are going in to free them. Warnings for violence.

* * *

“She will be fine,” Astra said, firmly. “She will be fine, and we will end these evil people for the last time. I swear it to you, Little One.”

 

“It’s not your job, Aunt Astra. They’re after all of us, not just me. So let’s just go in there and take them out, okay?”

 

Kara and Astra grasped forearms, looking at each other gravely.

 

“El Mayarah,” they said, together. They nodded at the humans and Ale’ara, and took off to DEO headquarters. They stayed away from the building at first, hovering behind a nearby building, and waited until Winn gave the signal. Then they burst in through the glass at the front of the building together. They were immediately set upon by Cadmus agents wearing Kryptonite armour. It didn’t have any effect on Kara or Astra, and they knocked out six or seven agents right away, hearing chaos from the back of the building as Ale’ara screamed at the Cadmus agents. Kara found an empty cell and they dumped the agents there, locking them in and melting the doors shut with their heat vision. Then they shot further inside the building, finding more than ten agents shooting at Ale’ara, wearing some sort of noise-cancelling headgear. They were on the verge of bringing her down, to Kara shot around at superspeed, removing their ear guards and watching as the Cadmus agents fell to Ale’ara’s screaming. She also placed the headgear carefully on Astra’s ears and her own, so they weren’t hurt by Ale’ara’s power. The three aliens advanced, and Kara was heartened to turn down one corridor and find J’onn Jonzz smiling at them. She lifted her hand in greeting, and was stunned when his grin widened, and then he shot a blue laser from his eye that cut into her skin.

 

“Shit. That’s not him,” she said. Astra was quicker than Kara was, however, and flew at the man impersonating J’onn, slamming him through several walls. She used her heat vision on his face, then, and Kara was disgusted to see that it melted, revealing metal underneath. She remembered that she had an EMP grenade in her suit, then, among others, and she threw it at J’onn’s doppelganger, yelling for Astra to get back. It did the job she had intended, switching off his cybernetic implants, leaving the frustrated man unable to move inside of his exoskeleton. They put him into another cell, using their heat vision to literally weld his feet to the floor. The last thing they needed was this man running around in their rear-view.

 

They checked the rest of the floor carefully before moving down to the next. There was no visible sign of their DEO teammates, but they could hear gunfire in the distance. They found a group of aliens, next, Carpathians, who attacked them, trying to spit poison at them. Ale’ara screamed at them and they passed out. Kara put them into another empty cell, locking them in with her heat vision since she had no idea what kind of light or radiation would weaken them.

 

There was no-one else on that floor, so they descended to the next.

 

“I can smell burning,” Astra said, suddenly. “We should find it.”

 

What they found was disgusting. One of the DEO’s interrogation rooms was being used by a tall man who Kara vaguely remembered; a man who had _her_ eye implanted into his head. He was using _her_ heat vision to torture J’onn Jonzz, a being who was terrified of fire. Kara burst in, blasting the man with her heat vision. He was thrown back into the wall behind him, half embedded in it. He shot at her with a green stone set into his chest, which had no effect, and she smiled.

 

“You thought that would work, huh? You thought you could come in here, pretend to be a victim in all of this, and then use _my_ powers to hurt the people I care about?”

 

He grinned at her, his teeth bloody.

 

“It’s a shame you didn’t get here sooner, before I burned your bitch soulmate to nothing,” he jeered. “It was fun to watch her squirm, though. The screaming gave me earache, though.”

 

Kara gritted her teeth and put a spare set of earguards on J’onn.

 

“Ale’ara, could you show the nice man what earache really feels like?” she asked, smiling. She reached forward, plucking out the man’s eye – her eye - in one fast, dipping motion. He screamed, once, and then Ale’ara screamed louder. His ears were bleeding after a few seconds, and a few seconds after that, his green heart shattered. Kara turned her back on him, kneeling next to J’onn. Astra was already trying to bring him around.

 

“J’onn? Where is everyone? What happened?”

 

J’onn shook his head, mumbling.

 

“J’onn? Where is Alex?”

 

“Lillian Luthor,” he said, clearly, before passing out.

 

Kara’s heart froze in her chest, and she fell to the floor, trying to breathe but failing. Lillian Luthor was dead. She had to be. She couldn’t be alive, because if she was, that meant that Kara wasn’t safe, that she could come for her again, that she might end up on that table again, having her organs pulled out while the woman laughed.

 

She was so deep in the dream that she didn’t notice when Astra removed her earguards, and she passed out quickly when Ale’ara blasted her with sound. She woke a few minutes later, Astra throwing water in her face.

 

“What happened?” she asked, wincing as she felt pain in her head and ears.

 

“I had to knock you out,” Ale’ara said, stepping into Kara’s line of vision. “We need you, Kara. You have to stay strong.”

 

Kara nodded, pulling herself up into a sitting position. Lillian Luthor was alive, and she was here. Well, she wouldn’t find Kara so easy to incapacitate. Even without the shields under her clothes, she was 99% immune to the effects of Kryptonite. And she had Astra, and Ale’ara. And the DEO team were still fighting.

 

“El Mayarah,” she said, slurring her words a little.

 

“Yes, Little One. We know that she is holding all of the aliens on the bottom level, and that the personnel in between are a distraction. So we go directly down there, and we let our friends out, and we take Cadmus out for good. Okay?”

 

Kara nodded, her head aching.

 

“You will be fine, Little One. We fight for your soulmate and for Ale’ara’s, and for our right to a life on this planet. These people will not bring us down.”

 

Kara stood, unsteadily, and then she was ready.

 

“Let’s just take out the others at speed,” she suggested. “There’s no reason to leave enemies behind us.”

 

Astra looked at her for a few seconds before nodding.

 

“Super-speed it is. You await our signal, please, Ale’ara.”

 

“Where is J’onn?” Kara asked.

 

“He is safe with Eliza. I took him out of the DEO and left him with Eliza at the Fortress.”

 

Kara nodded. They grabbed each other’s hands, speeding together through the stairwells and taking out gunmen and aliens at super-speed, carefully tempering their blows so as not to hurt anyone permanently. They were reasonable sure that the other floors were empty, and so they stopped, whistling for Ale’ara. She arrived a few seconds later in a flutter of wings, and all three aliens made their way down the last staircase.

 

There was complete pandemonium in the corridors. There were aliens fighting aliens, DEO agents fighting Cadmus agents, and they waded in, knocking out the more highly powered aliens who started making their way towards Kara and Astra. The DEO agents were surrounded, shooting at aliens with the pulse weaponry that Kara and Astra had provided. Ale’ara went to their aid, buffeting the Cadmus agents with her wings and dodging their shots.

 

“Stop!”

 

The voice was familiar, and terrifying. Kara found herself trembling, and she turned, seeing Lillian Luthor standing there, Lena in front of her as a human shield. She was holding a gun to her daughter’s head.

 

“If you continue to fight, _Supergirl,_ I will end my daughter and I will let go of this switch,” she sneered, showing a dead-man’s switch held in the hand she had wrapped around Lena’s neck. “A bomb will go off, and you will lose your soulmate forever.”

 

Kara crossed her arms over her chest, frowning.

 

“And what is it, exactly, that you want in return for not killing two of the people that I love?” Kara asked.

 

“You will come with me. No arguments, no struggling. You will come with me as my willing test subject and so will that big bird cosplayer beside you. No daughter of mine will be mated with an alien.”

 

Ale’ara hissed, and Kara took a deep breath.

 

“I will give up my life for Alex, you know that. But I will not risk another alien’s life. You have no backup, Lillian Luthor. Your cyborgs are trapped or dead. The aliens in those cells will rip you apart if I let them out. You won’t be able to move fast enough to stop me.”

 

It was true – the aliens still inside the cells were tearing at their cell doors, trying frantically to get out. Kara noticed that the lighting changed, suddenly, and realised that Winn must have switched off the alien containment systems on this floor. So the aliens inside would be able to get out, as soon as they realised they had their powers back. She smiled just slightly, and Lena caught the motion, her eyes going to the cells and then widening.

 

“I will kill your soulmate, Kryptonian. You will not survive that,” Lillian said, loosening her finger on the switch that would trigger a bomb.

 

“I wouldn’t,” Kara agreed. “I wouldn’t survive it. I would do anything to save her, you know that. You know my weakness. I will give myself up, but please, leave your daughter and Ale’ara out of this. They deserve to be together. Please.”

 

Kara fell to her knees, whispering “Now,” under her breath, and Ale’ara and Lena moved instantly, Lena lifting one arm, and Ale’ara throwing herself forward. Before Kara could blink, the hallway was filled with aliens baying for the Cadmus agents’ blood, and Lillian Luthor’s head was on the end of Ale’ara’s foreleg. Her body fell to the floor with a wet thud, thumb still holding the trigger of the bomb, and within a few seconds, the Cadmus agents were dead or in handcuffs.

 

“Alex,” Kara cried, trying to listen out for Alex’s heartbeat. It was no use, though. The building was lined with lead.

 

“She’s in the lab right at the back,” Lena said, coughing. “Lillian tortured her, but I think she’s alive.”

 

Kara shot to the back of the DEO, finding Alex in the lab where they tested on alien remains. She was strapped into what looked like a dentist’s chair. She was just breathing, her breath crackling in her lungs. A quick x-ray showed Kara that Alex was barely alive, most of her bones broken, stab wounds on almost every part of her body. Kara fell to her knees next to Alex, barely breathing. How could this happen? Rao wouldn’t bring them so close to their bonding and then let this happen, would he? Kara prayed feverishly. There was a whoosh of sound beside her, and she looked up to see Astra’s face, white and drawn.

 

“You must bring her to the Fortress straightaway,” Astra said. “You must undergo the bonding. It’s the only thing that might save her.”

 

Kara nodded, eyes wide.

 

“Bring me with you,” Lena Luthor rasped. “I can help, provide power to keep her alive on the way.”

 

“Okay,” Astra said. She picked Lena up, bridal-style, and Kara carefully untied Alex from the chair, removing the explosives strapped to her torso. She picked her soulmate up, wincing at the sound of bones grating together. She hovered off the floor as soon as she could, taking as much weight off Alex’s body as possible. They flew out of the back entrance of the DEO, Ale’ara following them, and then shot directly to the Fortress, Kara praying the whole time, feeling a steady stream of energy coming from Lena to Alex.

 

They landed outside the Fortress, Astra opening it with Clark’s ridiculous key, and they went inside. Eliza was waiting, candles lit and Zor-El and Alura’s AIs waiting.

 

“How did you know?”

 

“I contacted her,” Lena said. Her face was almost grey in colour. The strain of keeping Alex alive was killing her.

 

“Put her here, Kara,” Eliza said. “I will stand for Alex’s family.”

 

“As will I,” Astra said, touching Kara’s shoulder gently.

 

“Thank you,” Kara said, quietly. She set her soulmate down on a bed made from crystal, standing next to her, wringing her blood-soaked hands.

 

Crystals were set out in an unusual formation around them all, and Eliza told Kara to kneel in the spot next to Alex’s bed. The ceremony was long in its original form, but Eliza had spent months researching how it worked, and was able to read through the essentials of the Kryptonian ceremony in minutes. Kara agreed to give her heart and soul to her bondmate, to sacrifice anything and everything to make her happy, and in Alex’s stead, Astra made the same promises back, as was allowed in the case of a bondmate who was incapacitated or unable to speak. Kara stood, staring at Alex, holding her hand, willing her bondmate to heal, to wake, to live. Lena came to stand next to her, and next to her was Ale’ara. Lena took Kara’s hand, squeezing it, and Kara prayed to Rao that she would be allowed to live with her bondmate, however short that might be. Even if it was now, let them be together.

 

“We’re not dying right now, Stargirl,” Alex rasped, her hand fluttering in Kara’s. “Stop praying so loud.”

 

Kara breathed out, almost falling to her knees.

 

“Is she okay?” she asked, looking around at Eliza and Astra and Lena.

 

Lena nodded, her face regaining colour by the second.

 

“She’s okay, Kara.”

 

Eliza nodded, too, and Kara let a sob out.

 

“It’s okay, Stargirl. Why would you let a small thing like torture and almost murder to get in the way of our bonding?” Alex said, opening her eyes, blinking. Her eyes met Kara’s, and it was like everything around them stopped.

 

“You’re okay,” Kara said, tears streaming down her face. “You’re really okay.”

 

“Yeah,” Alex said, smiling up at her. There was dried blood all over her face, but she was luminous. “Did I hear right? Did we get married when I was asleep?”

 

“You did,” Kara said, laughing.

 

“What if I changed my mind?” Alex said, mock-annoyed. “I was totally gonna leave you at the altar because you steal all the potstickers.”

 

“Too late now, _:zrhueiao_ ,” Kara said. “You’re all mine, for eternity.”

 

“Damn,” Alex said, grumbling. “I was gonna see if Lena was single.”

 

Ale’ara growled next to her, the sound rumbling through her hard thorax, and Kara held up a hand.

 

“She’s just kidding,” Kara said. “Please don’t kill her when I just got her back.”

 

Ale’ara hissed, but calmed, as Lena turned to her, touching her thorax with gentle hands. Kara smiled, turning back to Alex.

 

“You really, really have to stop doing that,” she said, eyes filled with tears again. “I love you way too much. My heart can’t take it.”

 

“You’re stuck with me now, Stargirl,” Alex said, adoringly. Kara leaned down to kiss her, and a few minutes later she stood, swaying a little on her feet.

 

“Congratulations on your bonding, Little One,” Astra said. She gave Kara a hug, followed by a tentative Eliza. Kara pulled her in, thanking her for saving Alex’s life. Eliza cried on her shoulder for a moment, and then Alex pulled her mother in for a hug. It felt like a beginning, and Kara stood, watching her friends and family and her soulmate with tear-filled eyes. She thanked Rao for keeping them alive, for keeping them safe against demons like Lillian Luthor and her Cadmus cronies.

 

She intended to lay low for a while, to let Astra deal with National City’s superhero-ing, because she had a brand-new wife and she planned on taking a honeymoon before they returned to anything approaching a real life. They needed time to be together, just her and Alex, and Kara would make that happen if she had to build a base on the moon with her own two hands.

 

Alex was almost fully recovered within a day, her strength back to normal and her bones healed. She, however, was not quite the same. Kara knew this because she could feel Alex in her head. She couldn’t exactly make out words, but she could feel how Alex felt. And she felt blue, dejected. Guilty.

 

Kara left Astra and her foster mother in the main section of the Fortress, finding Alex lying in a guest bedroom, staring at the wall.

 

“Do you want to tell me what’s bothering you?” Kara asked, sitting on the bed behind Alex. She rubbed her wife’s back gently.

 

“I’m fine,” Alex said. “I’m just tired. I need to heal a little more.”

 

“I can see your bones, Alex. You are healed. And I… I can feel you, in my head. In my heart. You’re not okay.”

 

Alex turned to look at her.

 

“You can feel me? How?”

 

“I think the bonding did more than just bond our hearts for eternity. I can feel you, inside my head. Why are you so guilty, Alex? What did you do wrong?”

 

“I let her get to you,” Alex whispered, clearly holding back sobs with difficulty. “She was hiding inside the DEO the whole time, disguised as an alien. Her and John Corben, that cyborg thing that had your eye. They were inside, biding their time, and I didn’t notice that J’onn wasn’t J’onn, either. I put you at risk of ending up on her table, Kara, and I can never forgive myself.”

 

Kara’s heart spasmed in fear. The thought of being helpless with Lillian Luthor free to do anything she liked – it was terrifying. But she was truly dead, now, and Kara didn’t have to be scared anymore.

 

“Alex. No-one knew. No-one knew there was someone out there who looks like J’onn. No-one knew that the Lillian Luthor Astra killed wasn’t the real one. Why are you blaming yourself for it?” Kara asked.

 

“I could have been responsible for your death. I can’t… I don’t know how to cope with that,” Alex admitted.

 

“So don’t do it alone,” Kara said, pleading. “Come be with your friends, your family. We were all there. People were hurt. Some people died. We’re stronger if we mourn them together, and move on together.”

 

Alex’s eyes started to stream, and she trembled. Kara concentrated, trying to send her love, her trust, her faith in Alex, back through the bond that they had somehow established. After a moment, Alex stared at her, her eyes wide.

 

“That’s… that’s our bond?”

 

Kara nodded slowly.

 

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

 

Alex nodded mutely.

 

“You don’t blame me?”

 

“No, _zhao_. I do not blame you at all. You’re my love, my life. Everything I’ve ever wanted. None of us had any idea of what was going to happen. Thanks to Lena, we were able to prepare enough that we fought back when they took the DEO. We did our best with the information we’d been given, Alex. So please, come back to your family, and then you and I are going to have a honeymoon, okay?”

 

Alex nodded, eyes wide, and followed Kara back to the main area of the Fortress. Eliza and Astra greeted them both quietly, handing them hot drinks, and Lena and Ale’ara appeared after a moment, smiling at both women.

 

“You saved us,” Alex said, looking around the room. “You all did. I can’t thank you enough. If Kara had ended up in Lillian’s hands again, I… I don’t know what I would have done.”

 

The others murmured support, and Alex’s eyes filled with tears. Kara pulled her close, wrapping an arm around her waist, and Alex laid her head on Kara’s shoulder.

 

“I love you,” she murmured, and Kara smiled.

 

“ _Khap zhao rrip_ ,” she murmured, in return.

 

It was a little like having a real family again, Kara thought, as she looked around at the other people in the Fortress with them. She had spent so many years mourning Krypton. Perhaps this was her reward for all of the pain she’d been forced to go through.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A honeymoon, and someone meets their soulmate

* * *

Alex’s injuries, though they were healed, had delayed any plans Kara had for a few weeks. Dr Hamilton and Eliza were determined to test Alex’s health over and over, ensuring that she was truly healed and not about to relapse. So they had to wait for the honeymoon until they were given the all-clear. (Kara had argued that she could see Alex’s body at the molecular level and she could confirm that nothing was amiss, but all her arguments were pointless. The doctor simply said that she would be the one to decide when Alex was well enough to leave the country.) While they were waiting for the all-clear, Alex’s abilities started to manifest, starting with heat vision, with which she set fire to the ceiling of their bedroom during an especially intense orgasm. Kara put it out with her freeze breath, smiling, and Alex didn’t have enough time to feel guilty, because Kara’s tongue was still freezing cold from the freeze breath and she was going in for a second round. Alex came again, hard, much more quickly than she would have liked, but she made sure to close her eyes when she felt the heat build up behind them and in her lower abdomen.

 

The heat vision was followed by super-strength. After two pulverised doors, a refrigerator that ended up in a neighbour’s apartment, and the kitchen counter being smashed into powder, the DEO decided to move Kara and Alex to another apartment, one that had been properly reinforced for those with super-strength.

 

“You know, you used to get so annoyed when I’d break stuff, after I got to Earth. I can’t help but think that this is Rao’s revenge on you, Mrs Danvers,” Kara mocked, as Alex stood in front of the empty space where their refrigerator had stood only a few minutes earlier.

 

“Yeah, well, it’s hard to get used to after being normal for my whole life!” Alex protested. “I have to call J’onn.”

 

Kara re-checked their neighbour’s apartment with her x-ray vision, just to ensure that it was still empty, and was relieved to see it still deserted. There was a 6-foot hole in their apartment wall, and Kara couldn’t help but giggle.

 

“Stop laughing at me, Kara Zor-El,” Alex said, flicking her on the ear. It actually hurt, and Kara beamed when she realised that Alex really was her match in every way, now.

 

“You laughed at me when I accidentally froze my hand to the coffee table,” Kara reminded her. “I didn’t have my heat vision then, and I didn’t want to break the table, and you didn’t help at all, just rolled around on the floor laughing. You deserve a little mockery, if you ask me.”

 

Alex shook her head, smiling.

 

“Fine, Stargirl. You win. But I will have my revenge. Just wait until I can fly. You’re gonna have to step up your game to keep up with me.”

 

Kara just grinned. She couldn’t wait.

 

Finally, their much-needed honeymoon took them to Hawaii, to a corner of a small island where there was a shack made from local wood, a shack that somehow managed to have an internet connection so good that they were able to stream Netflix and Hulu to Kara’s laptop when they felt like vegging out. A local café delivered food to them twice a day, and Kara or Alex tried to make something worth eating in the early afternoon, when they could be bothered. Otherwise, however, they swam, they made love, and in the last week, they practised flying together.

 

Alex’s first time flying came after a particularly sweet moment between them. They were lying on the sand, drinking mojitos finished off with Kara’s freeze breath. Alex’s was still too erratic for her to use in such a controlled way.

 

“Are you happy?” Kara asked, turning to enjoy the sight of Alex in a bikini. “I mean, I can feel your general feelings, but are you okay with how everything turned out? We never really talked about if you wanted powers.”

 

Alex looked at her, eyes wide.

 

“Are you kidding me? I always wanted this, Kara. I always wanted to be able to protect you. More than anything. And here we are, and it seems like I’m going to be with you as long as you’re alive. And that means that Mom and Astra will probably have the same thing, and Clark and Lois. Maybe in time we can even have kids. We could bring some new Kryptonians into the world.”

 

Kara couldn’t help it. She started to cry, but her tears were from happiness. She could feel her heart surging with the joy she was feeling, and it radiated out through the bond. When she looked up, Alex was floating a foot above the sand.

 

“Oh my Rao, Alex! You’re flying!”

 

Alex’s eyes widened, and she flopped back to the sand like a landed fish. They both laughed for what felt like an hour, both getting fits of the giggles that just started up again each time their eyes met.

 

“You’re amazing,” Alex said, when they had finally stopped laughing.

 

“I’m amazing? You’re the human who just levitated,” Kara said, grinning.

 

“I can’t believe it,” Alex said. “I can’t believe that I can fly, too. I never even dared to dream about it, Kara. I never thought we could have that, the same abilities, you know?”

 

“I’m glad I could give these abilities to you,” Kara said. “We owe Eliza for that.”

 

Alex’s face darkened.

 

“I’m not sure I’m ready to owe Eliza anything. She might have helped save my life, and she definitely did the right thing in researching ways to keep us together, but the reason she did that was to make up for what she did to us before. The ten years she stole through her crazy vendetta, her internalised homophobia. Talk to me in a hundred years,” she said, still scowling.

 

Kara double checked that there was no-one around before floating herself right next to Alex. She touched her wife’s face gently, smoothing away the frown.

 

“She has earned the right to make things up to us, don’t you think, baby? I love you and I don’t want us to argue, but she is trying. And she’s Astra’s soulmate, which means she’s going to be in our lives from now on. So we both need to be okay with that.”

 

“I know,” Alex said, sighing. “I just… she took a lot from us, Kara. You might never have ended up at Cadmus if she hadn’t taken you away. You definitely wouldn’t have tried to kill yourself because you lost me. It’s a lot of pain to just… dismiss.”

 

“I’m not dismissing it, Alex,” Kara said, shaking her head. “I’m not. I might never get over the trauma of what happened at Cadmus. I don’t know if I’m the same person I was before I had to endure feeling suicidal. It changed me on a level I can’t even explain. But Miss Grant taught me something. To just move forward anyway, even when it feels like you can’t, and eventually it won’t feel like such an effort. If we keep looking back, we’re never going to be able to move on. Don’t forget it, that’s not what I’m saying. But forgive Eliza. She didn’t do it for fun. She was torn up and hurt and broken and she dealt with it in exactly all the wrong ways, and she hurt children, the ones we should always protect. But it’s done now, and despite everything we’ve been through, we’re here. Together. On a beach in Hawaii, lying in the sunshine that fuels the extraordinary power we both hold. So just… live, Alex. Live here, now. Not back there when we were both broken.”

 

Alex looked at her, expressionless, and tears dripped from her eyes.

 

“Your parents would be so proud of you, Kara Zor-El. I know that because I am. And if we ever have kids, I hope they’re ready to have the best mother ever, because that’s what they’re going to get, in you.”

 

Alex kissed her, grasping at her hair, and she made love to Kara right there on the beach, slipping her hand inside of Kara’s bikini bottoms, leaving marks with her lips and teeth that Kara would cherish, because they were made by Alex. Kara returned the favour a few minutes later, dragging Alex back inside their tiny dwelling, and later they practised taking off and hovering. Alex was a quick study, well used to mental and physical discipline, and she soon worked out how to fly reliably.

 

They had a flight booked to return to National City, but they cancelled it and bundled up their few belongings into backpacks and made the flight together, Kara in her super-suit and Alex swathed in black.

 

“This is so, so amazing,” Alex said, throwing a few barrel-rolls into her flight. “I love you, Kara Zor-El.”

 

“I love flying with you,” Kara said, corkscrewing through the air and then flying along on her back.

 

“You’re totally showing off now,” Alex yelled, grinning. Kara manoeuvred herself carefully until she was flying directly beneath Alex, and she reached up to kiss her, Alex’s hair tickling her face.

 

“Show off,” Alex said, wobbling a little in the air.

 

“You love it,” Kara said, spinning herself upright and throwing a challenge over her shoulder. “Catch me if you can!”

 

Alex couldn’t match her pace, but she gave it a good try. They landed on the balcony of their new apartment, opening the French doors with a thumbprint – the DEO had insisted on better security in this apartment.

 

“Time for bed, baby?” Kara asked.

 

Alex tackled her, grabbing her from underneath, bridal-style, and flying them both to the bedroom. Making love now, both super-powered and neither having to hold back, was a revelation. They could be as rough or as gentle as they liked. It was something that Kara never thought she would have, a chance to be with a partner who was on the same level as her, and now that Alex was almost as super as her, she enjoyed every moment of their time together.

 

The honeymoon was finally over, and now that the Cadmus chaos was dealt with, J’onn wanted to set up a task force to deal with extra-terrestrial threats. There were multiple other sections of the DEO, some of which dealt with unannounced visitors and determined whether they could or could not settle on Earth, dependant on their circumstances. Kara took a keen interest in their plight, as did Lena, who had decided to work with the DEO full-time, both as an engineer (which turned out to be one of her less flashy abilities) and as a telepath and healer. She was working hard to train herself to control her telekinesis, too, and Kara was fairly sure that, in time, Lena Luthor would be flying around National City in a costume just like Kara was.

 

Kara went back to CatCo after her month or so off, and Cat cried when she came back, hugging her for ages.

 

“I really thought you were gone again,” she said, sobbing.

 

“I told you I’d come back,” Kara said, hugging Cat a little tighter. She loved the older woman dearly, and wanted nothing but good for Cat, in the same way that Cat wanted for her. She told her the truth, what had happened to her and to Alex, about the DEO and Cadmus, and about the aliens who landed on earth to find that the DEO had no idea what to do with them.

 

Cat agreed not to publish anything, but asked if she could speak to J’onn about the displaced aliens.

 

“It seems that there’s no framework for them to be resettled. I think CatCo might be able to help, to get public support for some kind of alien amnesty. Since Superman gave his life for Metropolis, and since you came upon the scene, anti-alien sentiment is almost non-existent.”

 

Kara nodded.

 

“I’ll talk to J’onn. I think he’d appreciate the assist, actually. He’s tried to get in touch with the President but he’s being blocked by this general who hates aliens.”

 

A few days later, J’onn met with Cat, and while he said that he was terrified by her, he was also impressed.

 

“She actually wants to help. Did you know that her soulmate is a Durlan?” he asked, looking somewhat punch-drunk.

 

“I did,” Kara said. “I hope to help her find them, if I can.”

 

“I think that may be sooner than you think,” Lena said, passing by with a sly smirk on her face.

 

“That’s really annoying, you know,” Kara said, deadpan. Lena turned back and stuck her tongue out at Kara, skipping off. She was so much happier these days, since Lillian’s permanent death and her own bonding to Al’eara. They had done it in the Kryptonian way, with a representative of the Leptiré in attendance. Somehow, by a melding of Rao and Le’alnor’s (the Leptiré goddess’s) will, they were made one. They would now live long happy lives together, and when one died, so would the other. As it should be, as far as Kara was concerned. Alex was her whole life, and regardless of anything else that happened, she wouldn’t want to be here on Earth without her soulmate, not again.

 

Lena’s prediction came true shortly after. The President, after reading Cat’s story about the plight of refugee aliens on Earth, came to the DEO to meet with Director Henshaw, Supergirl, and Cat Grant.

 

When the President stepped into the room, Cat gasped, grasping at her right wrist. She pulled off the wristband she wore, and everyone could see that it was burning. She looked at the President’s guards, first, but none of them were affected. The President, however, was.

 

There was a loud cough from ‘Hank’.

 

“Madame President, would you mind if we spoke in private, here? I assure you that with Supergirl’s presence, you are in no danger.”

 

The President nodded gratefully, waving her arm at her Secret Service entourage who grumbled, but waited outside the sound-proofed room.

 

“You?” Cat said, eyes wide. “You’re Durlan?”

 

The President nodded, eyes wide. The usually composed woman was trembling.

 

“I knew… I knew it was you. But I couldn’t out myself. I’m the President, for the love of god. And I had no idea if you would be okay with your soulmate being an alien. And then I read your article, and… well. Here I am.”

 

“Thank god,” Cat breathed, moving closer. “Is this… is this your real face?”

 

“No,” the President said. “It’s not.”

 

“Let me see you,” Cat said, in such an awed voice that Kara blushed fiercely. It was a sacred moment, and she was loath to interrupt it, but there was no way to get out of the room without disturbing the newly-joined couple.

 

The President nodded, dropping her head. Her human face was replaced by reptilian skin and a regal-looking bony crest on her head, much like J’onn’s. Cat reached up and touched her face, and gasped.

 

“It’s so soft. It looks like it should be hard, like armour,” Cat said, sighing gently.

 

“I was born here, on this planet. On our homeworld we were cold-blooded, but here, the sun gives us abilities and makes us warm-blooded instead.”

 

“I love it,” Cat said, and then Olivia Marsdin, the President of the United States, dropped her reptilian head to kiss her new soulmate.

 

By this stage Kara and J’onn had turned around, blushing desperately. A few minutes later the President cleared her throat and called their names.

 

“I’m sorry for the sidebar, Director Henshaw, Supergirl. As you can probably tell, this has been a long time coming for Cat and me,” President Marsdin said.

 

They turned around. J’onn spoke first.

 

“There is no need to apologise, Madame President. I’m truly delighted that you’ve met your soulmate. I have yet to meet mine; I fear she may be a myth. But you have given me hope for my own love.”

 

Kara, for her part, simply stepped up to Cat’s side and enfolded her in a tight hug.

 

“I’m so happy for you,” she whispered. And then, out loud. “For both of you. Madame President, I’m so glad you are Cat’s soulmate. She deserves the best.”

 

“Thank you, Supergirl, for the compliment. But believe me, I’m the one getting the best of this bargain,” the President said, looking at Cat with nothing short of worship in her eyes.

 

J’onn cleared his throat and they all sat down at the table set aside for this meeting.

 

“So, now you know my secret,” the President said. “I hope you will keep it, in the interests of keeping the country stable. If you want me to resign, I will, but please don’t let my legacy be that I illegally became President and fooled the citizens of this country. I have lived her for four hundred years. I was born on Earth. I am as much of a citizen as anyone else.”

 

“You won’t find any argument from me,” J’onn said. He exchanged looks with Kara before nodding, and standing up. “Please don’t be alarmed. My name is J’onn J’onzz.”

 

He shot up in height to his full eight feet, red eyes shining, and the X across his chest catching the light.

 

“I am the last green Martian.”

 

President Marsdin smiled.

 

“I had a feeling someone had taken over. Right after Hank Henshaw went on that op to South America, his management style, such as it was, was noticed to have changed entirely. He was fair with aliens and though they still remained locked up, far fewer were sent to Cadmus. Far fewer were lost to their disgusting policies.”

 

“I’m glad my actions meet with your approval, Madame President. Might I ask why you didn’t take a more active role in the end of Cadmus yourself?” J’onn asked, quietly.

 

The President sighed.

 

“Firstly, please call me Olivia, all of you. And secondly – I was afraid. I was afraid that if I made a fuss about Cadmus, they would find out that I wasn’t human, and I would end up on one of their tables being dissected like all of those other poor aliens.”

 

Kara wasn’t expecting those words from the President, and they knocked her for six. The green-tipped scalpel, Lillian Luthor weighing her liver in a dish, an unnamed assistant pulling at her renal system to get a part they thought might give them superpowers, if implanted in a human. It all washed over her, and before she knew it she was drowning in it. Lillian was looming over her, and she pulled out Kara’s tongue, running the scalpel along the base as Kara choked, then wrenching it free. Blood filled Kara’s mouth, but she stayed stubbornly conscious, unable to scream as the thick liquid began to drown her.

 

“Kara, it’s okay. You’re safe, darling. You’re safe.”

 

It was a familiar voice, and it calmed her a little, but she needed Alex. She choked out her soulmate’s name, and J’onn’s voice rumbled in the background, and a few second later there was a crash, yells, gunshots. But they stopped and Alex was there, holding Kara in her arms.

 

“It’s okay, Stargirl. I’ve got you. You’re with me, now. Lillian Luthor is dust. Al’eara killed her, and you saved me. You’re the love of my life, : _zrhueiao._ Stay with me.”

 

Kara came back slowly, throwing up suddenly as the taste of metallic blood filled her mouth. Alex continued to talk to her in a quiet voice, and Kara concentrated on her heartbeat, her eyes. Her love. When she came back to herself fully, Alex called Vasquez to arrange some food and drink to restore Kara, and then brought her back to the table with Cat and J’onn and Olivia.

 

“I’m so sorry, Kara,” was the first thing Olivia said. “I had no idea you had been there. I would never have spoken of it so casually, had I known. I want you to tell me about your experiences at a later time, perhaps in writing, and I will tell the world your story.”

 

Kara nodded dully, taking a long drink from a hot chocolate that Alex brought to her.

 

They continued their conversation, and by the end of it, Olivia had decided to introduce a new bill, for Alien Amnesty, to her advisors and staffers. She asked if J’onn and Kara and others would contribute to it, and finally, she told J’onn that as soon as it was possible, he would be instated as the Director of the DEO under his real name.

 

“And you, Supergirl – you’ll be getting a medal. You and the others who took down Cadmus. Agent Danvers, Lena Luthor, General Astra, and the Leptiré woman. I can’t wait to meet her. You’ve all done a great service to this country, by taking down a black-ops agency that worked against the morals and the best interests of the United States. I can’t thank you enough. And Kara, if you need anything – any help from me, for any reason – you have it. I can have the best doctors in the world help you with your PTSD. I can speak to the Queen and have you knighted if you want – Liz owes me a favour.”

 

She winked at that, and Kara blinked, wondering if the President was saying what Kara thought she was saying. The Queen of England was an alien?

 

Olivia just smiled, shaking hands with J’onn and then asking Cat if she would come back to her hotel so they could talk. Cat just nodded, smitten, and Kara smiled widely. Then she swore in Kryptonian. Lena had predicted this, and she was right. Damn, it was annoying.

 

Alex stayed at her side the whole time, and took her home once the President had left.

 

“You okay, baby?” she asked, when they were wrapped up on their couch in soft clothes and a fluffy blanket.

 

“Mmm,” Kara hummed as she thought. She was okay, but she also wasn’t. Her little episode had proven to her that she wasn’t over what had happened to her. “I am, I guess. But I still have a long way to go.”

 

“I know, baby. There aren’t many people who have been through what you have. But if you keep working with your therapist, and you keep your family and friends close, then things will be okay eventually. You believe me, right?”

 

“I believe that you believe that,” Kara said, shrugging. “I do wonder sometimes if it’ll ever stop, though.”

 

“It will,” Alex said. “It has to. You deserve happiness, Stargirl, and you will have it.”

 

“I have happiness,” Kara said, sincerely, her eyes on Alex’s. “I have you. The rest will follow.”

 

Alex’s smile could have powered the whole of National City for a year.


End file.
